
Hare 7^ 

Book 

Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



EDITOR'S NOTE 

The text here presented, adapted for use in mixed 
classes, has been carefully collated with that of six or 
seven of the latest and best editions. Where there was 
any disagreement those readings have been adopted 
which seemed most reasonable and were supported by 
the best authority. 

Professor Meiklejohn's exhaustive notes form the sub- 
stance of those here used ; and his plan, as set forth in 
the " General Notice" annexed, has been carried out in 
these volumes. But as these plays are intended rather 
for pupils in school and college than for ripe Shake- 
spearian scholars, we have not hesitated to prune his 
notes of whatever was thought to be too learned for our 
purpose, or on other grounds was deemed irrelevant to 
it. The notes of other English editors have been freely 
incorporated. 



8 



GENEBAL NOTICE 

" An attempt has been made in these new editions to 
interpret Shakespeare by the aid of Shakespeare himself. 
The Method of Comparison has been constantly em- 
ployed ; and the language used by him in one place has 
been compared with the language used in other places in 
similar circumstances, as well as with older English and 
with newer English. The text has been as carefully 
and as thoroughly annotated as the text of any Greek or 
Latin classic. • * 

"The first purpose in this elaborate annotation is, of 
course, the full working out of Shakespeare's meaning. 
The Editor has in all circumstances taken as much pains 
with this as if he had been making out the difficult and 
obscure terms of a will in which he himself was per- 
sonally interested ; and he submits that this thorough 
excavation of the meaning of a really profound thinker 
is one of the very best kinds of training that a boy or 
girl can receive at school. This is to read the very mind 
of Shakespeare, and to weave his thoughts into the fibre 
of one's own mental constitution. And always new re- 
wards come to the careful reader — in the shape of new 
meanings, recognition of thoughts he had before missed, 

5 



O GENERAL NOTICE 

of relations between the characters that had hitherto 
escaped him. For reading Shakespeare is just like ex- 
amining Nature ; there are no hollownesses, there is no 
scamped work, for Shakespeare is as patiently exact and 
as first-hand as Nature herself. 

"Besides this thorough working-out of Shakespeare's 
meaning, advantage has been taken of the opportunity 
to teach his English — to make each play an introduction 
to the English of Shakespeare. For this purpose copi- 
ous collections of similar phrases have been gathered from 
other plays ; his idioms have been dwelt upon ; his pe- 
culiar use of words ; his style and his rhythm. Some 
teachers may consider that too many instances are given ; 
but, in teaching, as in everything else, the old French 
saying is true : Assez rCy a, sHl trop rfy a. The teacher 
need not require each pupil to give him all the instances 
collected. If each gives one or two, it will probably be 
enough ; and, among them all, it is certain that one or 
two will stick in the memory. It is probable that, for 
those pupils who do not study either Greek or Latin, this 
close examination of every word and phrase in the text of 
Shakespeare will be the best substitute that can be found 
for the study of the ancient classics. 

4 ' It were much to be hoped that Shakespeare should 
become more and more of a study, and that every boy 
and girl should have a thorough knowledge of at least 
one play of Shakespeare before leaving school. It would 
be one of the best lessons in human life, without the 
chance of a polluting or degrading experience. It would 



GENERAL NOTICE 7 

also have the effect of bringing back into the too pale 
and formal English of modern times a large number of 
pithy and vigorous phrases which would help to develop 
as well as to reflect vigor in the characters of the readers. 
Shakespeare used the English language with more power 
than any other writer that ever lived — he made it do 
more and say more than it had ever done ; he made it 
speak in a more original way ; and his combinations of 
words are perpetual provocations and invitations to origi- 
nality and to newness of insight." — J. M. D. Meikxe- 
john, M.A., Professor of the Theory, History, and 
Practice of Education in the University of St. Andrews. 



SHAKESPEARE'S GRAMMAR 

Shakespeare lived at a time when the grammar and 
vocabulary of the English language were in a state of 
transition. Various points were not yet settled ; and so 
Shakespeare's grammar is not only somewhat different 
from our own but is by no means uniform in itself. In 
the Elizabethan age, "Almost any part of speech can 
be used as any other part of speech. An adverb can be 
used as a verb, 'They askance their eyes' ; as a noun, 
1 the backward and abysm of time ' ; or as an adjective, 
'a seldom pleasure.' Any noun, adjective, or intransi- 
tive verb can be used as a transitive verb. You can 
; happy ' your friend, ' malice ' or ' foot ' your enemy, or 
4 fall ' an axe on his neck. An adjective can be used as 
an adverb ; and you can speak and act ' easy,' 4 free,' ' ex- 
cellent ' ; or as a noun, and you can talk of ' fair' instead 
of ' beauty,' and 'a pale' instead of 4 a paleness.' Even 
the pronouns are not exempt from these metamorphoses. 
A • he ' is used for a man, and a lady is described by a 
gentleman as ' the fairest she he has yet beheld.' In the 
second place, every variety of apparent grammatical in- 
accuracy meets us. He for him, him for he; spoke and 
took for spoken and taken ; plural nominatives with singu- 

8 



GRAMMAR AND VERSIFICATION 9 

lar verbs ; relatives omitted where they are now consid- 
ered necessary ; unnecessary antecedents inserted ; shall 
for will, should for would, would for vrish ; to omitted 
after I ought, inserted after I durst ; double nega- 
tives ; double comparatives ( ; more better,' etc.) and su- 
perlatives ; such followed by which, that by as, as used 
for as if; that for so that ; and lastly some verbs appar- 
ently with two nominatives, and others without any nom- 
inative at all." — Dr. Abbott's Shakesperian Grammar. 



SHAKESPEARE'S VERSIFICATION 

Shakespeare's plays are written mainly in what is 
known as blank verse; but they contain a number of 
riming, and a considerable number of prose, lines. As 
a rule, rime is much commoner in the earlier than in the 
later plays. Thus, Love's Labor's Lost contains nearly 
1100 riming lines, while (if we except the songs) Winter's 
Tale has none. The Merchant of Venice has 124. 

In speaking, we lay a stress on particular syllables ; 
this stress is called accent. T\ r hen the words of a com- 
position are so arranged that the accent recurs at regular 
intervals, the composition is said to be rhythmical. In 
blank verse the lines consist usually of ten syllables, of 
which the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth are 
accented. The line consists, therefore, of five parts, 
each of which contains an unaccented, followed by an ac- 
cented syllable, as in the word " attend." Each of these 



10 VERSIFICATION 

five parts forms what is called a foot or measure ; and 
the five together form a pentameter. "Pentameter" is 
a Greek word signifying u five measures." This is the 
usual form of a line of blank verse. But a long poem 
composed entirely of such lines would be monotonous, 
and for the sake of variety several important modifica- 
tions have been introduced. 

(a) After the tenth syllable, one or two unaccented 
syllables are sometimes added ; as — 

"Me-thought \ you said I you nei I ther lend \ nor bor I row." 

(5) In any foot the accent may be shifted from the sec- 
ond to the first syllable, provided two accented syllables 
do not come together. 

"Pluck 1 the] young suck f \ ing cubs 1 \ from the 1 1 she bear'." 

(c) In such words as "yesterday," "voluntary," " hon- 
esty," the syllables -day, -ta-, and -ty falling in the place 
of the accent, are, for the purposes of the verse, regarded 
as truly accented. 

" Bars' me I the right' 1 of vol'- 1 un-ta' \ ry choos' \ ing. " 

(d) Sometimes we have a succession of accented sylla- 
bles ; this occurs with monosyllabic feet only. 

"Why, now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark." 

(e) Sometimes, but more rarely, two or even three 
unaccented syllables occupy the place of one ; as — 

"He says \ he does, | be-ing then \ most flat\ter-ed." 



VERSIFICATION 11 

(/) Lines may have any number of feet from one to six. 

Finally, Shakespeare adds much to the pleasing variety 
of his blank verse by placing the pauses in different parts 
of the line (especially after the second or third foot), 
instead of placing them all at the ends of lines, as was 
the earlier custom. 

N.B. — In some cases the rhythm requires that what 
we usually pronounce as one syllable shall be divided 
into two, as fi-er (fire), su-er (sure), mi-el (mile), etc. ; 
too-elve (twelve), jaw-ee (joy), etc. Similarly, she-on 
(-tion or -sion). 

It is very important to give the pupil plenty of ear- 
training by means of formal scansion. This will greatly 
assist him in his reading. 



PLAN OF STUDY FOE "PERFECT 

POSSESSION" 

To attain to the standard of " Perfect Possession," the 
reader ought to have an intimate and ready knowledge 
of the subject. 

The student ought, first of all, to read the play as a 
pleasure ; then to read it over again, with his mind upon 
the characters and the plot ; and lastly, to read it for the 
meanings, grammar, etc. 

With the help of the scheme, he can easily draw up 
for himself short examination papers (1) on each scene, 
(2) on each act, (3) on the whole play. 

1. The Plot and Story of the Play. 

(a) The general plot ; 

(b) The special incidents. 

2. The Characters : Ability to give a connected account 

of all that is done, and most of what is said by each 
character in the play. 

3. The Influence and Interplay of the Characters upon 

each other. 

(a) Relation of A to B and of B to A ; 
(6) Relation of A to C and D. 
12 



PLAN OF STUDY 13 

4. Complete Possession of the Language. 

(a) Meanings of words ; 

(&) Use of old words, or of words in an old 
meaning ; 

(c) Grammar ; 

(d) Ability to qnote lines to illustrate a gram- 

matical point. 

5. Power to Reproduce, or Quote. 

(a) What was said by A or B on a particular 

occasion ; 
(.6) What was said by A in reply to B ; 

(c) What argument was used by C at a particular 

juncture ; 

(d) To quote a line in instance of an idiom or of 

a peculiar meaning. 

6. Power to Locate. 

(a) To attribute a line or statement to a certain 

person on a certain occasion ; 
(6) To cap a line ; 
(c) To fill in the right word or epithet. 



INTRODUCTION TO HAMLET 

" William Shakespeare. — He was born, it is thought, 
April 23, 1564, the son of a comfortable burgess of Strat- 
f ord-on-Avon. While he was still young, his father fell 
into poverty, and an interrupted education left the son 
an inferior scholar. He had 'small Latin and less 
Greek.' But by dint of genius and by living in a society 
in which all sorts of information were attainable, he 
became an accomplished man. The story told of his 
deer-stealing in Charlecote woods is without proof, but 
it is likely that his youth was wild and passionate. At 
nineteen, he married Ann Hathaway, seven years older 
than himself, and was probably unhappy with her. 
For this reason, or from poverty, or from the driving of 
the genius that led him to the stage, he left Stratford 
about 1586-1587, and went to London at the age of 
twenty-two, and, falling in with Marlowe, Greene, and 
the rest, became an actor and a play wright, and may have 
lived their unrestrained and riotous life for some years. 

"His First Period. — It is probable that before leaving 
Stratford he had sketched, a part at least, of his Venus 
and Adonis. It is full of the country sights and sounds, 

14 



IXTB OB TJCTION 15 

of the ways of birds and animals, such as he saw when 
wandering in Charleeote woods. Its rich and overladen 
poetry and its warm coloring made him, when it was 
published, 1591-1593, at once the favorite of men like 
Lord Southampton, and lifted him into fame. But be- 
fore that date he had done work for the stage by touch- 
ing up old plays, and writing new ones. We seem to 
trace his ' prentice hand ' in many dramas of the time, 
but the first he is usually thought to have retouched is 
Titus Andronicus, and, some time after, the First Part 
of Henry VI. 

" Love's Labor's Lost, the first of his original plays, in 
which he quizzed and excelled the Euphuists in wit, was 
followed by the rapid farce of the Comedy of Errors. Out 
of these frolics of intellect and action he passed into pure 
poetry in the Midsummer Night's Dream, and mingled 
into fantastic beauty the classic legend, the mediaeval 
fairyland, and the clownish life of the English mechanic. 
Italian story then laid its charm upon him, and the Two 
Gentlemen of Verona preceded the southern glow of pas- 
sion in Romeo and Juliet, in which he first reached tragic 
power. They complete, with Love's Labor's Won, after- 
wards recast as A ll's Well That Ends Well, the love plays 
of his early period. We may, perhaps, add to them the 
second act of an older play, Edward III. We should 
certainly read along with them, as belonging to the same 
passionate time, his Rape of Lucre ce, a poem finally 
printed in 1591, one year later than the Venus and Adonis. 

" The same poetic succession we have traced in the 



16 IXTB OB JJCTION 

poets is now found in Shakespeare. The patriotic 
feeling of England, also represented in Marlowe and 
Peele, now seized on him, and he turned from love to 
begin his great series of historical plays with Richard 
II., 1593-1594. Richard III. followed quickly. To 
introduce it and to complete the subject, he recast the 
Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. (written by some 
unknown authors), and ended his first period with 
King John ; five plays in a little more than two years. 

"His Second Period, 1596-1602. — In The Merchant of 
Venice, Shakespeare reached entire mastery over his art. 
A mingled woof of tragic and comic threads is brought 
to its highest point of color when Portia and Shylock 
meet in court. Pure comedy followed in his retouch 
of the old Taming of the Shrew, and all the wit of the 
world, mixed with noble history, met next in the three 
comedies of Falstaff, the First and Second Parts of 
Henry IV., and the Merry Wives of Windsor. The 
historical plays were then closed with Henry V., a 
splendid dramatic song to the glory of England. 

" The Globe theatre, in which he was one of the pro- 
prietors, was built in 1599. In the comedies he wrote 
for it, Shakespeare turned to write of love again, not to 
touch its deeper passion as before, but to play with it in 
all its lighter phases. The flashing dialogue of Much 
Ado About Nothing was followed by the far-off forest 
world of As You Like It, where 'the time fleets care- 
lessly/ and Rosalind's character is the play. Amid all 
its gracious lightness steals in a new element, and the 



INTBODUCTION 17 

melancholy of Jaques is the first touch we have of the 
older Shakespeare who had ' gained his experience, and 
whose experience had made him sad.' And yet it was 
but a touch ; Twelfth Night shows no trace of it, though 
the play that followed, All's Well That Ends Well, again 
strikes a sadder note. We find this sadness fully grown 
in the later sonnets, which are said to have been finished 
about 1602. They were published in 1609. 

"Shakespeare's life changed now, and his mind 
changed with it. He had grown wealthy during this 
period, and famous, and was loved by society. He was 
the friend of the Earls of Southampton and Essex, and 
of William Herbert, Lord Pembroke. The queen patron- 
ized him ; all the best literary society was his own. He 
had rescued his father from poverty, bought the best 
house in Stratford and much land, and was a man of 
wealth and comfort. Suddenly all his life seems to have 
grown dark. His best friends fell into ruin, Essex per- 
ished on the scaffold, Southampton went to the Tower, 
Pembroke was banished from the Court ; he may him- 
self, as some have thought, have been concerned in the 
rising of Essex. Added to this, we may conjecture, from 
the imaginative pageantry of the sonnets, that he had 
unwisely loved, and been betrayed in his love by a dear 
friend. Disgust of his profession as an actor, and public 
and private ill weighed heavily on him, and in darkness 
of spirit, though still clinging to the business of the 
theatre, he passed from comedy to write of the sterner 
side of the world, to tell the tragedy of mankind. 



18 INTBODUCTION 

"His Third Period, 1602-1608, begins with the last days 
of Queen Elizabeth. It contains all the great tragedies, 
and opens with the fate of Hamlet, who felt, like the 
poet himself, that l the time was out of joint.' Hamlet, 
the dreamer, may well represent Shakespeare, as he 
stood aside from the crash that overwhelmed his friends, 
and thought on the changing world. The tragi-comedy 
of Measure for Pleasure was next w r ritten, and is tragic 
in thought throughout. Julius Ccesar, Othello, Macbeth, 
Lear, Troilus and Cressida (finished from an incomplete 
work of his youth), Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, 
Timon (only in part his own) were all written in these 
five years. The darker sins of men, the un pitying fate 
which slowly gathers round and falls on men, the aveng- 
ing wrath^of conscience, the cruelty and punishment of 
weakness, the treachery, lust, jealousy, ingratitude, 
madness of men, the follies of the great, and the fickle- 
ness of the mob, are all, with a thousand other varying 
moods and passions, painted, and felt as his own while 
he painted them, during this stern time. 

"His Fourth Period, 1608-1613. — As Shakespeare 
wrote of these things, he passed out of them, and his last 
days are full of the gentle and loving calm of one who 
has known sin and sorrow and fate, but has risen above 
them into peaceful victory. Like his great contempo- 
rary, Bacon, he left the world and his own evil time 
behind him, and w T ith the same quiet dignity sought the 
innocence and stillness of country life. The country 
breathes through all the dramas of this time. The 



INTB OB UCTION 1 9 

flowers Perdita gathers in Winter's Tale, and the frolic 
of the sheep-shearing he may have seen in the Stratford 
meadows ; the song of Fidele in Cymbeline is written by- 
one who already feared no more the frown of the great, 
nor slander nor censure rash, and was looking forward 
to the time when men should say of him — ■ 

" ' Quiet consummation have ; 
And renowned be thy grave ! ' 

"Shakespeare probably left London in 1609, and lived 
in the house he had bought at Stratf ord-on-Avon. He 
was reconciled, it is said, to his wife, and the plays he 
writes speak of domestic peace and forgiveness. The 
story of Marina, which he left unfinished, and which two 
later writers expanded into the play of Pericles, is the 
first of his closing series of dramas. The Two Noble 
Kinsmen of Fletcher, a great part of which is now, on 
doubtful grounds, I think, attributed to Shakespeare, 
and in which the poet sought the inspiration of Chaucer, 
would belong to this period. Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, 
and the Tempest bring his history up to 1612, and in 
the next year he closed his poetic life by writing, with 
Fletcher, Henry VIII. For three years he kept silence, 
and then, on the 23d of April, 1616, the day he reached 
the age of fifty-two, as is supposed, he died. 

" His Work. — We can only guess with regard to Shake- 
speare's life ; we can only guess with regard to his charac- 
ter. It has been tried to find out what he was from his 
sonnets and from his plays, but every attempt seems to . 



20 INTB OB UCTIOX 

be a failure. We cannot lay our hand on anything and 
say for certain that it was spoken by Shakespeare out of 
his own character. The most personal thing in all his 
writings is one that has scarcely been noticed. It is the 
Epilogue to the Tempest; and if it be, as is most proba- 
ble, the last thing he ever wrote, then its cry for forgive- 
ness, its tale of inward sorrow, only to be relieved by 
prayer, give us some dim insight into how the silence 
of those three years was passed ; while its declaration of 
his aim in writing, i which was to please/ — the true defi- 
nition of an artist's aim, — should make us very cautious 
in our efforts to define his character from his works. 
Shakespeare made men and women whose dramatic 
action on each other, and towards a catastrophe, was 
intended to please the public, not to reveal himself. 

" No commentary on his writings, no guesses about his 
life or character, are worth much which do not rest on 
this canon as their foundation: What he did, thought, 
learned, and felt, he did, thought, learned, and felt as an 
artist. And he was never less the artist, through all the 
changes of the time. Fully influenced, as we see in 
Hamlet he was, by the graver and more philosophic cast 
of thought of the later time of Elizabeth ; passing on 
into the reign of James I., when pedantry took the 
place of gayety, and sensual the place of imaginative 
love in the drama, and artificial art the place of that 
art which itself is nature ; he preserves to the last the 
natural passion, the simple tenderness, the sweetness, 
grace, and fire of the youthful Elizabethan poetry. The 



INTB OB UC TION 21 

Winter's Tale is as lovely a love story as Romeo and 
Juliet, the Tempest is more instinct with imagination 
than the Midsummer Night's Dream, and as great in 
fancy, and yet there are fully twenty years between 
them. The only change is in the increase of power, and 
in a closer and graver grasp of human nature. Around 
him the whole tone and manner of the drama altered 
for the worse as his life went on, but his work grew to 
the close in strength and beauty." — Stopford Brooke. 

HISTORY OF THE PLAY 

"1. The first known edition of Hamlet appeared in 1603. 
It bore the following title-page : — 

The 

Tragicall Historie of Hamlet 

Prince of Denmarke 

By William Shake- speare. 

As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse ser- 

uants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two V- 

niuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere 

At London printed for N. L. and John Trundell. 1603. 

" The second quarto appeared in the following year, with 
a title-page much altered : — 

THE 

Tragicall Historie of 

Hamlet, 

Prince of Denmarke 

By William Shakespeare. 

Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much 

againe as it was, according to the true and perfect 

Coppie. 

At London, 

Printed by I. R. for N. L., and are to be sold at his 

shoppe vnder St. Dunston's Church in 

Fleetstreet 1604. 



22 INTB OB UCTION 

" It was upon this second quarto that all future edi- 
tions of the play were based. It is conjectured that 
Shakespeare worked upon the basis of an old play, an 
edition of which is known to have appeared in 1602 ; 
that the quarto of 1603 represents his remodelling of 
this old play; and that the edition of 1601 was a com- 
plete and final recast. 

"2. The story seems to have been drawn from the 
Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, a native of El- 
sinore, who wrote about the end of the twelfth cen- 
tury ; though the earliest existing edition of his history 
has the date of 1514. A French writer, Francis de 
Belief orest, embodied the story of Amleth, Hamlet, or 
Hamblet in his Histoires Tragiques ; and an unknown 
English writer translated this story and published it 
separately under the title of The Hystorie of Hamblet — 
a black-letter. quarto copy of which, bearing the date 
of 1608, exists in the library of Trinity College, 
Cambridge. 

"3. The play of Hamlet is the longest of Shake- 
speare's plays ; and it is one of the greatest. It is also 
the most varied in incident ; and the argument of the 
play would make a very long story. Though full of 
incident, the main interest of the play is centered in 
thought and character — in the moods of mind through 
which Hamlet passes, until he meets death in the ful- 
fillment of the purpose towards which he has not 
marched or hastened, but simply drifted. There has 
also been more written about Hamlet than about any 



INTB OD UCTION 23 

other play in the world. The books, pamphlets, and 
papers that have appeared on this play would consti- 
tute a respectable library. The play belongs to what 
has been called Shakespeare's period of ' Middle Trag- 
edy'; and its companion in this category is Julius 
Ccesar. Both are tragedies of thought ; and both 
were written when Shakespeare was about thirty-seven 
or thirty-eight. 

"4. The young reader may with advantage study 
fully and carefully the character of Hamlet, as it 
stands out from and over against the circumstances 
which surround him, and as it may be interpreted — - 
by the aid of contrast — by the characters of the other 
personages of the play. He is a student at the Uni- 
versity of Wittenberg ; he hears of the sudden and 
mysterious death of his father; he hastens home to 
find his mother married to his uncle — an event which 
shocks his soul and begins to poison his feelings 
towards his mother ; he hears of the appearance of his 
father's ghost ; he has an interview with it and a stern 
task laid upon him ; l^e whole of the habits of his 
previous life are broken up ; he is tortured by grief, 
doubt, love, and difficulty ; and only in dying does he 
attain to clearness of mind and strength of soul. 
After having studied the relation of Hamlet to^the 
circumstances and characters that surround him, the 
reader may take the other personages of the play and 
study them in pairs. Thus Horatio may be compared 
with Laertes ; and both again with Hamlet. Horatio 



2i IKTBODUCTION 

says little, and is little affected by external events. 
Laertes is a worldly man — the son of his father ; and 
with no inner life at all. He is as thoughtless as 
Hamlet is thoughtful — as rash and eager for action as 
Hamlet is filled to excess with considerations, reflec- 
tions, and balancings of judgment. Claudius, again, 
stands in direct contrast with the late King (see III. 
iv. 56-66). Polonius, full of wise maxims which he 
has lost the power of applying to present exigencies, 
may be contrasted with Horatio, who says nothing, 
but is always ready to help, whatever may happen. 
Osric, in the end of the play, is an admirable set-off 
to the quiet soldierliness of Marcellus and Bernardo, 
in the beginning. Ophelia, with her deep, unspeak- 
ing nature — one of those persons 'who live only in 
their own hearts, and upon their own hearts ' — forms 
a noble contrast to the shallow external nature of the 
Queen, wmose conscience and heart do not begin to 
speak until they are appealed to in the directest and 
strongest way by Hamlet himself and by tragical 
events." — Meiklejohn. 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 

" The universality of Shakespeare's genius is in some 
sort reflected in Hamlet. He has a mind wise and 
witty, abstract and practical; the utmost reach of 
philosophical contemplation is mingled with the most 
penetrating sagacity in the affairs pf life ; playful jest, 



INTB OB UCTION 25 

biting satire, sparkling repartee, with the darkest and \ 
deepest thoughts that can agitate man. He exercises 
all his various faculties with surprising readiness. 
He passes without an effort ' from grave to gay, from 
lively to severe,' — from his everyday character to 
personated lunacy. He divines, with the rapidity of 
lightning, the nature and motives of those who are 
brought into contact with him ; fits in a moment his 
bearing and retorts to their individual peculiarities ; 
is equally at home whether he is mocking Polonius 
with hidden raillery, or dissipating Ophelia's dream 
of love, or crushing the sponges with sarcasm and in- 
vective, or talking euphuism with Osric, and satirizing 
while he talks it ; whether he is uttering wise maxims, 
or welcoming the players with facetious graciousness, 
— probing the inmost souls of others, or sounding the 
mysteries of his own. His philosophy stands out con- 
spicuous among the brilliant faculties which contend 
for the mastery. It is the quality which gives w r eight 
and dignity to the rest. It intermingles with all his 
actions. He traces the most trifling incidents up to 
their general laws. His natural disposition is to lose 
himself in contemplation. He goes thinking out of 
the world. The commonest ideas that pass through 
his mind are invested with a wonderful freshness and 
originality. His meditations in the churchyard are 
on the trite notion that all ambition leads but to the 
grave. But wmat condensation, w r hat variety, what 
picturesqueness, what intense, unmitigated gloom I 



26 INTE OB UCTION 

It is the finest sermon that was ever preached against 
the vanities of life. 

" So far, we imagine, all are agreed. But the motives 
which induce Hamlet to defer his revenge are still, 
and perhaps will ever remain, debatable ground. The 
favorite doctrine of late is that the thinking part of 
Hamlet predominated over the active, — that he was 
as weak and vacillating in performance as he was great 
in speculation. If this theory were borne out by his 
general conduct, it would no doubt amply account for 
his procrastination; but there is nothing to counte- 
nance, and much to refute, the idea. Shakespeare has 
endowed him with a vast energy of will. There could 
be no sterner resolve than to abandon every purpose i 
of existence, that he might devote himself, unfettered, 
to his revenge; nor was ever resolution -better ob- 
served. He breaks through his passion for Ophelia, 
and keeps it down, under the most trying circum- 
stances, with such inflexible firmness, that an eloquent 
critic has seriously questioned whether his attachment 
_was real. The determination of his character appears 
again at the death of Polonius. An indecisive mind 
would have been shocked, if not terrified, at the deed. 
Hamlet dismisses him with a few contemptuous words, 
as a man would brush away a fly. He talks with even 
greater indifference of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
whom he sends Ho sudden death, not shriving-time 
allowed.' He has on these, and, indeed, on all occa- 
sions, a short and absolute way which only belongs to 



INTB OB UCTION 27 

resolute souls. The features developed in his very 
hesitation to kill the King are inconsistent with the 
notion that his hand refuses to perform what his head 
contrives. He is always trying to persuade himself 
into a conviction that it is his duty, instead of seeking 
for evasions. — Quarterly Review, Vol. LXXIX., 1847. 
" When Hamlet was written, Shakspere had passed 
through his years of apprenticeship, and become a 
master-dramatist. In point of style the play stands 
midway between his early and his latest works. The 
studious superintendence of the poet over the develop- 
ment of his thought and imaginings, very apparent in 
Shakspere's early writings, now conceals itself; but 
the action of imagination and thought has not yet 
become embarrassing in its swiftness and multiplicity 
of direction. Rapid dialogue in verse, admirable for 
its combination of verisimilitude with artistic metri- 
cal effects, occurs in the scene in which Hamlet ques- 
tions his friends respecting the appearance of the 
Ghost ; the soliloquies of Hamlet are excellent ex- 
amples of the slow, dwelling verse which Shakspere 
appropriates to the utterance of thought in solitude ; 
and nowhere did Shakspere write a nobler piece of 
prose than the speech in which Hamlet describes to 
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern his melancholy. But 
such particulars as these do not constitute v the chief 
evidence which proves that the poet had now attained 
maturity. The mystery, the baffling, vital obscurity 
of the play, and in particular of the character of its 



28 INTB OB UCTION 

chief person, make it evident that Shakspere had 
left far behind him that early stage of development 
when an artist obtrudes his intentions, or, distrusting 
his own ability to keep sight of one uniform design, 
deliberately and with effort holds that design persist- 
ently before him. When' Shakspere completed Ham- 
let, he must have trusted himself and trusted his 
audience ; he trusts himself to enter into relation with 
his subject, highly complex as that subject was, in a 
pure, emotional manner. Hamlet might so easily have 
been manufactured into an enigma, or a puzzle ; and 
then the puzzle, if sufficient pains were bestowed, 
could be completely taken to pieces and explained. 
But Shakspere created it a mystery, and therefore it 
is for ever suggestive ; for ever suggestive, and never 
wholly explicable. 

" It must not be supposed, then, that any idea, any 
magic phrase, will solve the difficulties presented by 
the play, or suddenly illuminate everything in it which 
is obscure. The obscurity itself is a vital part of the 
work of art, which deals not with a problem, but with 
a life ; and in that life, the history of a soul which 
moved through shadowy border-lands between the 
night and day, there is much (as in many a life that 
is real) to elude and baffle inquiry. . . . The vital 
heart of the tragedy of Hamlet cannot be an idea ; 
neither can it be a fragment of political philosophy. 
Out of Shakspere's profound sympathy with an in- 
dividual soul and a personal life the wonderful crea- 
tion came into being. . . . 



INTB OB JJCTION 29 

" Hamlet is not merely or chiefly intellectual ; the 
emotional side of his character is quite as important 
as the intellectual ; his malady is as deep-seated in his 
sensibilities and in his heart as it is in the brain. If 
all his feelings translate themselves into thoughts, it 
is no less true that all his thoughts are impregnated 
with feeling. To represent Hamlet as a man of pre- 
ponderating power of reflection, and to disregard his 
craving, sensitive heart, is to make the whole play in- 
coherent and unintelligible. It is Hamlet's intellect, 
however, together with his deep and abiding sense of 
the moral qualities of things, which distinguishes him, 
upon the glance of a moment, from the hero of Shak- 
spere's first tragedy, Romeo. . . . 

" Hamlet does not assume madness to conceal any ( 
plan of revenge. He possesses no such plan. And as 
far as his active powers are concerned, the assumed 
madness is a misfortune. Instead of assisting him to-' 
achieve anything, it is one of the causes which tend to 
retard his action. For now, instead of forcing him- 
self upon the world, and compelling it to accept a 
mandate of his will, he can enjoy the delight of a mere 
observer and critic ; an observer and critic both of 
himself and of others. He can understand and mock, 
whereas he ought to set himself sternly to his piece of 
work. He utters himself henceforth at large, because 
he is unintelligible. He does not aim at producing 
any effect with his speech, except in the instance of 
his appeal to Gertrude's conscience. His words are 



30 INTB OB UCTIOX 

not deeds. They are uttered self- indulgently to please 
the intellectual or artistic' part of him, or to gratify 
his passing mood of melancholy, of irritation, or of 
scorn. He bewilders Polonius with mockery, which 
effects nothing, but which bitterly delights Hamlet by 
its subtlety and cleverness. He speaks with singular 
openness to his courtier-friends, because they, filled 
with thoughts of worldly advancement and ambition, 
read all his meanings upside down, and the heart of 
his mystery is absolutely inaccessible to their shallow 
wits. When he describes to them his melancholy, he 
is in truth speaking in solitude to himself. Nothing 
is easier than to throw them off the scent. ; A knav- 
ish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.' The exquisite 
cleverness of his mimetics and his mockery is some 
compensation to Hamlet for his inaction ; this intel- 
lectual versatility, this agility, flatters his conscious- 
ness ; and it is only on occasions that he is compelled 
to observe into what a swoon or syncope his will has 
fallen. 

" Yet it has been truly said that only one who feels 
Hamlet's strength should venture to speak of Hamlet's 
weakness. That, in spite of difficulties without and 
inward difficulties, he still clings to this terrible duty, 
— letting it go, indeed, for a time, but returning to 
it again, and in the end accomplishing it, — implies 
strength. He is not incapable of vigorous action, — if 
only he be allowed no chance of thinking the fact 
away into an idea. . . . But all his action is sudden 



INTB OB UCTION 35 

we are by abundant evidence, that Shakspere trans- 
formed with energetic will his knowledge into fact, 
we may be confident that when Hamlet was written, 
Shakspere had gained a further stage in his culture of 
self-control, and that he had become not only adult as 
an author, but had entered upon the full maturity of 
his manhood." 

— Dowdex, Shakspere: His Mind and Art 
"In Hamlet, though there is no Denmark of the ninth 
century, Shakespeare has suggested the prevailing rude- 
ness of manners quite enough for his purpose. We 
see it in the single combat of Hamlet's father with the 
elder Fortinbras, in the vulgar wassail of the king, in 
the English monarch being expected to hang Rosen- 
crantz and Guildenstern out of hand merely to oblige 
his cousin of Denmark, in Laertes, sent to Paris to be 
made a gentleman of, becoming instantly capable of 
any the most barbarous treachery to glut his ven- 
geance. We cannot fancy Ragnar Lodbrog or Eric 
the Red matriculating at Wittenberg, but it was essen- 
tial that Hamlet should be a scholar, and Shakespeare 
sends him thither without more ado. All through 
the play we get the notion of a state of society in 
which a savage nature has disguised itself in the ex- 
ternals of civilization, like a Maori deacon, who has 
only to strip and he becomes once more a tattooed 
pagan with his mouth watering for a spare-rib of his 
pastor. Historically, at the date of Hamlet, the Danes 
were in the habit of burning their enemies alive in 



36 INTB OB UCTION 

their houses, with as much of their family about them 
as might be to make it comfortable. Shakespeare seems 
purposely to have dissociated his play from history by 
changing nearly every name in the original legend. 
The motive of the play — revenge as a religious duty 
— belongs only to a social state in which the tradi- 
tions of barbarism are still operative, but, with infal- 
lible artistic judgment, Shakespeare has chosen, not 
untamed Nature, as he found it in history, but the 
period of transition, a period in w T hich the times are 
always out of joint, and thus the irresolution which 
has its roots in Hamlet's own character is stimulated 
by the very incompatibility of that legacy of ven- 
geance he has inherited from the past with the new 
culture and refinement of which he is the representa- 
tive. . . . 

" It is an inherent peculiarity of a mind like Hamlet's 
that it should be conscious of its own defect. Men of 
his type are forever analyzing their own emotions and 
motives. They cannot do anything, because they 
always see two ways of doing it. They cannot deter- 
mine on any course of action, because they are always, 
as it were, standing at the cross-roads, and see too well 
the disadvantage of every one of them. It is not that 
they are incapable of resolve, but somehow the band 
between the motive power and the operative faculties 
is relaxed and loose. The engine works, but the 
machinery it should drive stands still. The imagina- 
tion is so much in overplus, that thinking a thing be- 



INTB OB UCTIOJST 37 

comes better than doing it, and thought with its easy 
perfection, capable of everything because it can accom- 
plish everything with ideal means, is vastly more 
attractive and satisfactory than deed, which must be 
wrought at best with imperfect instruments, and al- 
ways fall short of the conception that went before it. 
1 If to do,' says Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, — 
< If to do were as easy as to know what 'twere good to 
do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages 
princes' palaces.' Hamlet knows only too well what 
'twere good to do, but he palters with everything in a 
double sense : he sees the grain of good there is in 
evil, and the grain of evil there is in good, as they 
exist in the world, and, finding that he can make those 
feather-weighted accidents balance each other, infers 
that there is little to choose between the essences 
themselves. He is of Montaigne's mind, and says 
expressly that ' there is nothing good or ill, but think- 
ing makes it so.' He dwells so exclusively in the 
world of ideas that the world of facts seems trifling, 
nothing is worth the while ; and he has been so long 
objectless and purposeless, so far as actual life is con- 
cerned, that, when at last an object and a name are 
forced upon him, he cannot deal with them, and 
gropes about vainly for a motive outside of himself 
that shall marshal his thoughts for him and guide his 
faculties into the path of action. He is the victim not 
so much of feebleness of will as of an intellectual in- 
difference that hinders the will from working long in 



38 INTRODUCTION' 

any one direction. He wishes to will, but never wills. 
His continual iteration of resolve shows that he has 
no resolution. He is capable of passionate energy 
where the occasion presents itself suddenly from with- 
out, because nothing is so irritable as conscious irreso- 
lution with a duty to perform. But of deliberate 
energy he is not capable; for there the impulse must 
come from within, and the blade of his analysis is so 
subtile that it can divide the finest hair of motive twixt 
north and northwest side, leaving him desperate to 
choose between them. The very consciousness of his 
defect is an insuperable bar to his repairing it ; for 
the unity of purpose, which enthuses every fibre of 
the character with will available whenever wanted, is 
impossible where the mind can never rest till it has 
resolved that unity into its component elements, and 
satisfied itself which on the whole is of greater value. 
A critical instinct, so insatiable that it must turn upon 
itself, for lack of something else to hew and hack, be- 
comes incapable at last of originating anything except 
indecision. It becomes infallible in what not to do. 
How easily he might have accomplished his task is 
shown by the conduct of Laertes. When he has a 
death to revenge, he raises a mob, breaks into the 
palace, bullies the king, and proves how weak the 
usurper really was. ... 

" Hamlet is always studying himself. This world 
and the other, too, are always present to his mind, and 
there in the corner is the little black kobold of a doubt 



I 



INTB OB UCTION 39 

making mouths at him. He breaks down the bridges 
before him, not behind him, as a man of action would 
do; but there is something more than this. He is an 
ingrain sceptic ; though his is the scepticism, not of 
reason, but of feeling, whose root is want of faith in 
himself. In him it is passive, a malady rather than a 
function of the mind. We might call him insincere ; 
not that he was in any sense a hypocrite, but only that 
he never was and never could be in earnest. Never 
could be, because no man without intense faith in 
something ever can. Even if he only believed in 
himself, that were better than nothing ; for it will 
carry a man a great way in the outward successes of 
life, nay, will even sometimes give him the Archime- 
dean fulcrum for moving the world. But Hamlet 
doubts everything. He doubts the immortality of the 
soul, just after seeing his father's spirit, and hearing 
from its mouth the secrets of the other world. He 
doubts Horatio even, and swears him to secrecy on 
the cross of his sword, though probably he himself has 
no assured belief in the sacredness of the symbol. He 
doubts Ophelia, and asks her, 'are you honest?' 
He doubts the ghost, after he has had a little time to 
think about it, and so gets up the play to test the 
guilt of the king. And how coherent the whole 
character is ! With what perfect tact and judgment 
Shakespeare, in the advice to the players, makes him 
an exquisite critic ! For just here that part of his 
character which would be weak in dealing with affairs 



40 ixtb on uction 

is strong. A wise scepticism is the first attribute of 
a good critic. . . . 

" Another striking quality in Hamlet's nature is his 
perpetual inclination to irony. I think this has been 
generally passed over too lightly, as if it were some- 
thing external and accidental, rather assumed as a mask 
than part of the real nature of the man. It seems to 
me to go deeper, to be something innate, and not 
merely factitious. ... It is not like the irony of 
Timon, which is but the wilful refraction of a clear 
mind twisting awry whatever enters it, — or of Iago, 
which is the slime that a nature essentially evil loves 
to trail over all beauty and goodness to taint them 
with distrust : it is the half jest, half earnest of an 
inactive temperament that has not quite made up its 
mind whether life is a reality or no, whether men were 
not made in jest, and which amuses itself equally with 
finding a deep meaning in trivial things and a trifling 
one in the profoundest mysteries of being, because 
the want of earnestness in its own essence infects 
everything else with its own indifference. If there be 
now and then an unmannerly rudeness and bitterness 
in it, as in the scenes with Polonius and Osric, we 
must remember that Hamlet was just in the condition 
which spurs men to sallies of this kind; dissatisfied, 
at one neither with the world nor with themselves, 
and accordingly casting about for something out of 
himself to vent his spleen upon. But even in these 
passages there is no hint of earnestness, of any pur- 



INTB 01) UCT10N 41 

pose beyond the moment ; they are mere cat's-paws of 
vexation, and not the deep-raking ground-swell of 
passion, as we see it in the sarcasm of Lear. 

" The question of Hamlet's madness has been much 
discussed and variously decided. High medical author- 
ity has pronounced, as usual, on both sides of the 
question. But the induction has been drawn from 
too narrow premises, being based on a mere diagnosis 
of the case, and not on an appreciation of the character 
in its completeness. We have a case of pretended 
madness in the Edgar of King Lear; and it is cer- 
tainly true that that is a charcoal sketch, coarsely 
outlined, compared with the delicate drawing, the 
lights, shades, and half-tints of the portraiture in 
Hamlet. But does this tend to prove that the mad- 
ness of the latter, because truer to the recorded obser- 
vation of experts, is real, and meant to be real, as 
the other to be fictitious ? Not in the least, as it ap- 
pears to me. Hamlet, among all the characters of 
Shakespeare, is the most eminently a metaphysician 
and psychologist. He is a close observer, continually 
analyzing his own nature and that of others, letting 
fall his little drops of acid irony on all who come near 
him, to make them show what they are made of. 
Even Ophelia is not too sacred, Osric not too contemp- 
tible for experiment. If such a man assumed madness, 
he would play his part perfectly. If Shakespeare him- 
self, without going mad, could so observe and remem- 
ber all the abnormal symptoms as to be able to 



42 INTE OB UCTIOX 

reproduce them in Hamlet, why should it be beyond 
the power of Hamlet to reproduce them in himself ? 
If you deprive Hamlet of reason, there is .no truly 
tragic motive left. He would be a fit subject for 
Bedlam, but not for the stage. We might have pa- 
thology enough, but no pathos. Ajax first becomes 
tragic when he recovers his wits. If Hamlet is irre- 
sponsible, the whole play is a chaos. That he is not 
so might be proved by evidence enough, were it not 
labor thrown away. 

" This feigned madness of Hamlet's is one of the few 
points in which Shakespeare has kept close to the old 
story on which he founded his play ; and as he never 
decided without deliberation, so he never acted with- 
out unerring judgment. Hamlet drifts through the 
whole tragedy. He never keeps on one tack long 
enough to get steerage-way, even if, in a nature like 
his, with those electric streamers of wind and fancy 
forever wavering across the vault of his brain, the 
needle of judgment would point in one direction long 
enough to strike a course by. The scheme of simu- 
lated insanity is precisely the one he would have been 
likely to hit upon, because it enabled him to follow 
his own bent, and to drift with an apparent purpose, 
postponing decisive action by the very means he 
adopts to arrive at its accomplishment, and satisfying 
himself with a show of doing something that he may 
escape so much the longer the dreaded necessity of 
really doing anything at all. It enables him to play 



INTRODUCTION 43 

with life and duty, instead of taking them by the 
rougher side, where alone any firm grip is possible, — 
to feel that he is on the way toward accomplishing 
somewhat, when he is really paltering with his own 
irresolution. Nothing, I think, could be more finely 
imagined than this. Voltaire complains that he goes 
mad without any sufficient object or result. Per- 
fectly true, and precisely what was most natural for 
him to do, and, accordingly, precisely what Shakespeare 
meant that he should do. It was delightful to him to 
indulge in imagination and humor, to prove his ca- 
pacity for something by playing a part : the one thing 
he could not do was to bring himself to act, unless 
when surprised by a sudden impulse of suspicion, — 
as where he kills Polonius, and there he could not see 
his victim. He discourses admirably of suicide, but 
does not kill himself ; he talks daggers, but uses none. 
He puts by the chance to kill the king with the excuse 
that he will not do it while he is praying, lest his soul 
be saved thereby, though it is more than doubtful 
whether he believed it himself. He allows himself to 
to be packed on 2 to England, without any motive ex- 
cept that it would for the time take him farther from 
a present duty : the more disagreeable to a nature like 
his because it was present, and not a mere matter for 
speculative consideration. When Goethe made his 
famous comparison of the acorn planted in a vase 
which it burst with its growth, and says that in like 
manner Hamlet is a nature which breaks down under 



44 INTB OB UCTIOX 

the weight of a duty too great for it to bear, he seems 
to have considered the character too much from one 
side. Had Hamlet actually killed himself to escape 
his true onerous commission, Goethe's conception of 
him would have been satisfactory enough. But Ham- 
let was hardly a sentimentalist, like Werther ; on the 
contrary, he saw things only too clearly in the dry 
north-light of the intellect. It is chance that at last 
brings him to his end. It would appear rather that 
Shakespeare intended to show us an imaginative tem- 
perament brought face to face with actualities, into 
any clear relation of sympathy with which it cannot 
bring itself. The very means that Shakespeare makes 
use of to lay upon him the obligation of acting — the 
ghost — really seems to make it all the harder for him 
to act ; for the specter but gives an additional excite- 
ment to his imagination and a fresh topic for his, 
scepticism." — Lowell, Shakespeare Once More. 

u Hamlet is a name : his speeches aud sayings but 
the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What, then, are 
they not real ? They are as real as our own thoughts. 
Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who 
are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which 
is above that of history. Whoever has become thought- 
ful and melancholy through his own mishaps or those 
of others ; whoever has borne about with him the 
clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself ' too 
much i' the sun ' ; whoever has seen the golden lamp 
of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own 



IJVTB OB UC TIOX 45 

breast, and could find in the world before him only a 
dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it ; who- 
ever has known i the pangs of despised love, the inso- 
lence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of 
the unworthy takes ' ; he who has felt his mind sink 
within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a 
malady ; who has had his hopes blighted and his youth 
staggered by the apparition of strange things; w r ho 
cannot be well at ease while he sees evil hovering near 
him like a specter ; whose powers of action have been 
eaten up by thought, — he to whom the universe seems 
infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of 
soul makes him careless of consequences, and who- 
goes to a play as his best resource to shove off, to a 
second remove, the evils of life by a mock representa- 
tion of them : this is the true Hamlet. 

" We have been so used to this tragedy that we 
hardly know how to criticise it any more than we should 
know how to describe our own faces. But we must 
make such observations as we can. It is the one 
of Shakespeare's plays that we think of oftenest, be- 
cause it abounds most in striking reflections on human 
life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are trans- 
ferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account 
of humanity. Whatever happens to him we apply to 
ourselves, because he applies it so himself as a means 
of general reasoning. He is a great moralizer, and 
what makes him worth attending to is that he moral- 
izes on his own feelings and experience. He is not 



46 INTR on UCTION 

a commonplace pedant. If Lear shows the greatest 
depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for 
the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development 
of character. Shakespeare had more magnanimity 
than any other poet, and he has shown more of it in 
this play than in any other. There is no attempt to 
force an interest : everything is left for time and cir- 
cumstances to unfold. The attention is excited with- 
out effort ; the incidents succeed each other as matters 
of course ; the characters think and speak and act 
just as they might do if left entirely to themselves. 
There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The 
observations are suggested by the passing scene, — the 
gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music 
borne upon the wind. The whole play is an exact . 
transcript of what might be supposed to have taken 
place at the court of Denmark at the remote period 
of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements 
in morals and manners were heard of. It would 
have been interesting enough to have been admitted 
as a bystander in such a scene, at such a time, 
to have heard and seen something of what was going 
on. But here we are more than spectators. We 
have not onjy 'the outward pageants and the signs of 
grief,' but 'we have that within that passes show.' 
We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the 
passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers 
give us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature ; 
but Shakespeare, together with his own comments, 



INTB OD UCTION 47 

gives us the original text that we may judge for our- 
selves. This is a very great advantage. . . . 

" The moral perfection of this character has been 
called in question, we think, by those who did not 
understand it. It is more interesting than according 
to rules : amiable, though not faultless. The ethical 
delineations of ' that noble and liberal casuist ' (as 
Shakespeare has been well called) do not exhibit the 
drab-colored Quakerism of morality. His plays are 
not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man, or 
from The Academy of Compliments ! We confess we 
are a little shocked at the want of refinement of those 
who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. 
The want of punctilious exactness in his behavior 
either partakes of the ' license of the time,' or else 
belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement 
in the character, which makes the common rules of 
life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. 
He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal 
of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with 
the airy world of contemplation to lay as much stress 
as he ought on the practical consequences of things. 
His habitual principles of action are unhinged and out 
of joint with the time. 

" Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the 
Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia on throwing flowers into 
the grave. . . . Shakespeare was thoroughly a master 
of the mixed motives of human character, and he here 
shows us the Queen, who was so criminal in some 



48 IN TB OD UCTIOX 

respects, not without sensibility and affection in other 
relations of life. Ophelia is a character almost too 
exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. Oh, rose of 
May ! oh, flower too soon faded ! Her love, her mad- 
ness, her death, are described with the truest touches 
of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which no- 
body but Shakespeare could have drawn in the way 
that he has done, and to the conception of which there 
is not even the smallest approach, except in some of 
the old romantic ballads. Her brother, Laertes, is a 
character we do not like so well : he is too hot and 
choleric, and somewhat rhodomontade." 

— Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. 

" I set about investigating every trace of Hamlet's 
character, as it had shown itself before his father's 
death : I endeavored to distinguish what in it was in- 
dependent of this mournful event ; independent of the 
terrible events that followed ; and what most proba- 
bly the young man would have been, had no such thing 
occurred. 

" Soft, and from a noble stem, this royal flower had 
sprung up under the immediate influences of majesty : 
the idea of moral rectitude with that of princely ele- 
vation, the feeling of the good and dignified with the 
consciousness of high birth, had in him been unfolded 
simultaneously. He was a prince, by birth a prince ; 
and he wished to reign, only that good men might be 
good without obstruction. Pleasing in form, polished 
by nature, courteous from the heart, he was meant 



INTB OB JJCTION 49 

to be the pattern of youth and the joy of the 
world. 

" Without any prominent passion, his love for Ophelia 
was a still presentiment of sweet wants. His zeal in 
knightly accomplishments was not entirely his own ; 
it needed to be quickened and inflamed by praise be- 
stowed on others for excelling in them. Pure in sen- 
timent, he knew the honorable-minded, and could 
prize the rest which an upright spirit tastes on the 
bosom of a friend. To a certain degree, he had 
learned to discern and value the good and the beauti- 
ful in arts and sciences ; the mean, the vulgar was of- 
fensive to him ; and if hatred could take root in his 
tender soul, it was only so far as to make him properly 
despise the false and changeful insects of a court, and 
play with them in easy scorn. He was calm in his 
temper, artless in his conduct ; neither pleased with 
idleness, nor too violently eager for employment. The 
routine of a university he seemed to continue when at 
court. He possessed more mirth of humor than of 
heart; he was a good companion, pliant, courteous, 
discreet, and able to forget and forgive an injury ; yet 
never able to unite himself with those who overstepped 
the limits of the right, the good, and the becoming. . . . 

" Figure to yourselves this youth, this son of princes ; 
conceive him vividly, bring his state before your eyes, 
and then observe him when he learns that his father's 
spirit walks ; stand by him in the terrors of the night, 
when the venerable ghost itself appears before him. 



50 INTB OD UCTION 

A horrid shudder passes over him ; he speaks to the 
mysterious form ; he sees it beckon him ; he fol- 
lows it, and hears. The fearful accusation of his 
uncle rings in his ears ; the summons to revenge, and 
the piercing oft-repeated prayer, Remember me ! 

" And when the ghost had vanished, who is it that 
stands before us? A young hero panting for ven- 
geance ? A prince by birth, rejoicing to be called to 
punish the usurper of his crown ? No ! trouble and 
astonishment take hold of the solitary young man ; 
he grows bitter against smiling villains, swears that he 
will not forget the spirit, and concludes with the sig- 
nificant ejaculation : — 

' The time is out of joint : O cursed spite, 
That ever I was born to set it right ! ' 

" In these words, I imagine, will be found the key 
to Hamlet's whole procedure. To me it is clear that 
Shakspeare meant, in the present case, to represent 
the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for 
the performance of it. In this view the whole piece 
seems to me to be composed. There is an oak-tree 
planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only 
pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the 
jar is shivered. 

" A lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature, with- 
out the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks 
beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not 
cast away. All duties are holy for him ; the present 
is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of 



INTB OB UCTION 51 

him ; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for 
him. He winds, and turns, and torments himself ; he 
advances and recoils ; is ever put in mind, ever puts 
himself in mind ; at last does all but lose his purpose 
from his thoughts ; yet still without recovering his 
peace of mind/' — Goethe, Wilhelm Meister. (Trans- 
lated by Carlyle.) 

u Understand that, as he says these words Q Well 
said, old mole! ' &c, I. v. 162), his teeth chatter, and 
that he is ' pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each 
other.' Intense anguish ends with a burst of laughter 
which is nothing else than a spasm. Thenceforth 
Hamlet speaks as though he had a continuous nervous 
attack. His madness is feigned, I admit ; but his 
mind, as a door whose hinges are twisted, swings and 
bangs to every wind with a mad precipitance and with 
a discordant noise. He has no need to search for 
strange ideas, apparent incoherences, exaggerations, 
the deluge of sarcasm which he accumulates. He 
finds them within him ; he does himself no violence, 
— he simply gives himself up to them. When he has 
the piece played which is to unmask his uncle, he 
raises himself, lounges on the floor, would lay his head 
in Ophelia's lap, he addresses the actors, and comments 
on the piece to the spectators ; his nerves are strung, 
his excited thought is like a waving and crackling 
flame, and cannot find fuel enough in the multitude 
of objects around it, upon all of which it seizes. When 
the king rises, unmasked and troubled, Hamlet sings 



52 INTBODUCTION 

and says, * would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers 

— if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me — with 
two Provincial roses on my razed shoes get me a fellow- 
ship in a cry of players, sir?' It is clear that this 
state is a disease, and that the man will not survive 
it. . . . What Hamlet's imagination robs him of is 
the coolness and strength to go quietly, and, with pre- 
meditation, plunge a sword into a breast. He can only 
do the thing on a sudden suggestion ; he must have a 
moment of enthusiasm; he must think the king is 
behind the arras, or else, seeing that he himself is 
poisoned, he must find his victim under his foil's 
point. He is not master of his acts ; occasion dictates 
them ; he cannot plan a murder, but must improvise 
it. A too lively imagination exhausts energy by the 
accumulation of images, and by the fury of intentness 
which absorbs it. You recognize in him a poet's soul, 
made not to act, but to dream, which is lost in contem- 
plating the phantoms of its creation, which sees the 
imaginary world too clearly to play a part in the real 
world; an artist whom evil chance has made a prince, 
whom worse chance has made an avenger of crime, 
and who, destined by nature for genius, is condemned 
by fortune to madness and unhappiness. Hamlet is 
Shakespeare, and at the close of a gallery of portraits, 
which have all some features of his own, Shakespeare 
has painted himself in the most striking of them all." 

— Taine, Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise. {Trans- 
lated by H. Van Laun.) 



INTB OD UCTION 53 



Ophelia 

" Of the character of Ophelia, and the situation 
she holds in the action of the play, I need say little. 
Everything about her is young, beautiful, artless, in- 
nocent, and touching. She conies before us in striking 
contrast to the queen, who, fallen as she is, feels the 
influence of her simple and happy virgin purity. 
Amid the frivolity, flattery, fawning, and artifice of a 
corrupted court, she moves in all the unpolluted love- 
liness of nature. She is like an artless, gladsome, and 
spotless shepherdess, with the gracefulness of society 
hanging like a transparent veil over her natural 
beauty. But we feel, from the first, that her lot is 
to be mournful. The world in which she lives is not 
worthy of her. And soon, as we connect her destiny 
with Hamlet, we know that darkness is to overshadow 
her, and that sadness and sorrow will step in between 
her and the ghost-haunted avenger of his father's 
murder. Soon as our pity is excited for her, it con- 
tinues gradually to deepen ; and when she appears in 
her madness, we are not more prepared to weep over 
all its most pathetic movements than we afterwards 
are to hear of her death. Perhaps the description of 
that catastrophe by the Queen is poetical rather than 
dramatic ; but its exquisite beauty prevails, and, 
Ophelia, dying and dead, is still the same Ophelia 
that first won our love. Perhaps the very forgetf ul- 
ness of her, throughout the remainder of the play, 



5i 1NTB OB UCTION 

leaves the soul at full liberty to dream of the departed. 
She has passed away from the earth like a beautiful 
air, — a delightful dream. There would have been no 
place for her in the agitation and tempest of the final 
catastrophe." 
— T[homas] C[ampbell], Letters on Shakespeare. 
" Ophelia, — poor Ophelia ! Oh far too soft, too good, 
too fair to be cast among the briers of this working- 
day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life ! 
What shall be said of her ? for eloquence is mute before 
her ! Like a strain of sad, sweet music which comes 
floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and 
which we rather feel than hear, — like the exhalation 
of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms, — 
like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught 
a stain of earth, — like the light surf severed from the 
billow, which a breath disperses, — such is the char- 
acter of Ophelia ; so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if 
a touch would profane it ; so sanctified in our thoughts 
by the last and worst of human woes, that we scarcely 
dare to consider it too deeply. The love of Ophelia, 
which she never once confesses, is like a secret which 
we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon 
our hearts as upon her own. Her sorrows ask not 
words, but tears; and her. madness has precisely the 
same effect that would be produced by the spectacle 
of real insanity, if brought before us ; we feel inclined 
to turn away and veil our eyes in reverential pity and 
too painful sympathy. . . . 



IX TB OB UC TIOJST 5 5 

" It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from 
her innocence, and pictured without any indication 
of weakness, which melts us with such profound pity. 
She is so young that neither her mind nor her person 
have attained maturity ; she is not aware of the nature 
of her own feelings ; they are prematurely developed 
in their full force before she has strength^ to bear 
them ; and love and grief together rend and shatter 
the frail texture of her existence, like the burning 
fluid poured into a crystal vase. She says very little, 
and what she does say seems rather intended to hide 
than to reveal the emotions of her heart ; yet in those 
few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with 
her character, and with what is passing in her mind, 
as if she had thrown forth her soul with all the glow- 
ing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems 
innate, a part of her being, ' as dwells the gathered 
lightning in a cloud ' ; and we never fancy her but 
with the dark splendid eyes and Titian-like complexion 
of the South. While in Ophelia we recognize as dis- 
tinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of 
the North, whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion 
she has inspired, more conscious of being loved than 
of loving ; and yet, alas ! loving in the silent depths 
of her young heart far more than she is loved. . . . 

"Of her subsequent madness, what can be said? 
What an affecting, what an astonishing picture of a 
mind utterly, hopelessly wrecked ! past hope, past cure ! 
There is the frenzy of excited passion, — there is the 



56 INTBODUCTIOX 

madness caused by intense and continued thought. — 
there is the delirium of fevered nerves ; but Ophelia's 
madness is distinct from these : it is not the suspen- 
sion, but the utter destruction, of the reasoning 
powers; it is the total imbecility which, as medical 
people well know, frequently follows some terrible 
shock to the spirits. Constance is frantic ; Lear is 
mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in frag- 
ments before us, — a pitiful spectacle ! Her wild, 
rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her 
quick transitions from gayety to sadness, — each 
equally purposeless and causeless ; her snatches of old 
ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep 
with in her infancy, — are all so true to the life, that 
we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged 
to Shakespeare alone so to temper such a picture that 
we can endure to dwell upon it : — 

' Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, 
She turns to favor and to prettiness.' " 

— Mrs. Jameson, Characteristics of Women. 

Polonius 

"Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in 
business, stored with observation, confident in his 
knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into 
dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented as 
designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of 
prefaces that made no introduction, and of method 



INTR on UCTION 57 

that embarrassed rather than explained. This part 
of his character is accidental; the rest is natural. 
Such a man is positive and confident, because he 
knows that his mind was once strong, and knows not 
that it is become weak. Such a man excels in gen- 
eral principles, but fails in the particular application. 
He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in fore- 
sight." — Dr. Samuel Johnson". 

" Polonius has no difficulty in calling to mind a num- 
ber of wise precepts for the guidance of his son's con- 
duct, the last of which is most striking for its force 
and nobleness. Yet it is undeniable that he is often 
both foolish and mean. The reason is that his 
memory has outlived his intellect; that prettrr esses 
have taken the place of wisdom in his mind ; that he 
recalls words of wisdom and noble sentiments rather 
than feels them ; and that his acknowledged services 
have so persuaded him of his own merit that he will 
both act meanly and express himself absurdly, be- 
cause he conceives, without any misgiving at all, that 
whatever he does or says is justified by his saying or 
doing it. Still, in estimating this character, we should 
do well to remember that the use of language like that 
of Polonius' would not, in Shakespeare's euphuistic 
days, argue the complete folly which it would at the 
present time." — Moberly. 



58 INTB OB UCTION 



Horatio 

" Horatio is the only complete man in the play, — 
solid, well-knit, and true ; a noble, quiet nature, with 
that highest of all qualities, judgment, always sane and 
prompt ; who never drags his anchors for any wind of 
opinion or fortune, but grips all the closer to the real- 
ity of things. He seems one of those calm, undemon- 
strative men whom we love and admire without asking 
to know why, crediting them a capacity of great things, 
without any test of actual achievement, because we feel 
that their manhood is a constant quality, and no mere 
accident of circumstances and opportunity. Such men 
are always sure of the presence of their highest self 
on demand. Hamlet is continually drawing bills on 
the future, secured by his promise of himself to him- 
self, which he can never redeem. . . . 

" We do not believe that Horatio ever thought he 
< was not a pipe for Fortune's finger to play what 
stop she pleased/ till Hamlet told him so. That was 
Fortune's affair, not his ; let her try it, if she liked. 
He is unconscious of his own peculiar qualities, as 
men of decision commonly are, or they would not be 
men of decision. When there is a thing to be done, 
they go straight at it, and for the time there is noth- 
ing for them in the whole universe but themselves 
and their object." — Lowell, Shakespeare Once More. 

" The character of Horatio is the only spot of sun- 
light in the play ; and he is a cheering, though not a 



INTB OD UCTIOX 59 

joyous gleam coming across the dark hemisphere of 
treachery, mistrust, and unkindness. The cheerful- 
ness of the grave-digger arises from an intimacy with, 
and a callous indifference to, his occupation, which, as 
Horatio says : — 

1 Custom hath made in him a property of easiness.' 

It is the result, too, of a healthy old age ; or, in some 
sort, it is not a sentiment, but a physical consequence ; 
even a negation. 

" But in the deportment of Horatio we have the con- 
stant recognition of a placid and pensive man ; making 
no protestations, yet constantly prepared for gentle 
service. Modest, and abiding his time to be appreci- 
ated, his friendship for Hamlet is a purely disinter- 
ested principle, and the Prince bears high testimony 
to it, — an illustrious and eloquent tribute to the qual- 
ities of his head and heart. (Act III. Sc. 2.) . . . 

" And all this is no lip-deep attestation. Horatio has 
it, and has earned it. As he adhered to his friend 
through life, so would he have followed him in death ; 
and only consented to survive him that he might 
redeem his character with the world." 
— Charles Cowdeist-Clarke, Shakespeare Characters. 

ROSENCRANTZ AND GuiLDENSTERN 

" Rosen crantz and Guildenstern are favorable 
samples of the thorough-paced, time-serving court 
knave — servants of all-work, ticketed and to be hired 



60 INTB OB UCTION 

for any hard or dirty job. Shakespeare has at once, 
and unequivocally, signified his opinion of the race, 
by making Rosencrantz, the time-server, the school- 
fellow of Hamlet, and under the color of their early 
associations, professing a personal friendship — even 
an affection for him, at the very time that he had 
accepted the office of spy upon his actions, and traitor 
to his confidence. ' Good my lord, what is your 
cause of distemper ? You do surely but bar the door 
upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to 
your friend.' Immediately upon the heel of this 
protestation he accepts the King's commission to con- 
vey his ' friend ' to England, where measures had 
been taken for his assassination. Rosen crantz and 
his fellow would designate themselves as thoroughly 
'loyal men'; they make no compromise of their call- 
ing ; the ' broad R ' is burnt into them ; they are for 
the king's service exclusively ; and with the scavenger's 
calling they would scoop all into that reservoir. The 
poet has sketched them in few and bold outlines ; 
their subtleties of character stare out like the bones of 
a starved beast. They are time-servers by profession, 
and upon hire ; and 'verily they have their reward.' " 
— Charles Cowdex-Clarke, Shakespeare Characters. 



THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET 



PERSONS REPRESENTED 

Claudius, King of Denmark 

Hamlet, son to the late, and nephew to the present King 

Polonius, Lord Chamberlain 

Horatto, friend to Hamlet 

Laertes, son to Polonins 

voltimand, 

Cornelius, 

rosencrantz, 

GuiLDEXSTERN, 
OSRIC, 

A Gentleman 
A Priest 
Marcellus 
Bernardo, 



> Courtiers 



Officers 



Francisco, a Soldier 
Reynaldo, servant to Polonins 
Players 

Two Clowns, grave-diggers 
Fortinbras, Prince of Norway 
A Captain 

English Ambassadors 

Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, and mother to Hamlet 
Ophelia, daughter to Polonins. 

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, 
other Attendants 

Ghost of Hamlet's father 
SCENE — Elsinore 



and 



62 



HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK 



ACT I 

Scene I 

Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle 

Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo 

Ber. Who's there ? 

Fran. Nay, answer me : stand, and unfold yourself. 

Ber. Long live the king! 

Fran. Bernardo ? 

Ber. He. 

Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour. 

Ber. 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, 
Francisco. 

Fran. For this relief much thanks ; 'tis bitter cold, 
And I am sick at heart. 

Ber. Have you had quiet guard ? 

Fran. Not a mouse stirring. 

Ber. Well, good night. 
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, 10 

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. 
63 



64 HAMLET [Act I 

Fran. I think I hear them. — Stand, ho ! Who 
is there? 

Enter Horatio and Marcelltjs 

Hor. Friends to this ground. 

Mar. And liegemen to the Dane. 

Fran. Give you good night. 

Mar. O, farewell, honest soldier : 

Who hath relieved you ? 

Fran. Bernardo hath my place. 

Give you good night. [Exit 

Mar. Holla ! Bernardo ! 

Ber. Say, — 

What, is Horatio there ? 

Hor. A piece of him. 

Ber. Welcome, Horatio ; welcome, good Marcellus. 

Mar. What, has this thing appeared again to-night? 
Ber. I have seen nothing. 

Mar. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy; 
And will not let belief take hold of him 
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us : 
Therefore I have entreated him along 
With us to watch the minutes of this night, 
That if again this apparition come, 
He may approve our eyes and speak to it. 



Scene 1] HAMLET 65 

Hor. Tush, tush, 'twill not appear. 

Ber. Sit down awhile ; 

And let us once again assail your ears, 
That are so fortified against our story, 30 

What we two nights have seen. 

Hor. Well, sit we down, 

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. 

Ber. Last night of all, 
When yon same star that's westward from the pole 
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven 
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, 
The bell then beating one, — 

Enter Ghost 

Mar. Peace, break thee off ; look, where it comes 

again ! 
Ber. In the same figure, like the king that's dead. 
Mar. Thou art a scholar ; speak to it, Horatio. 40 
Ber. Looks it not like the king ? mark it, Horatio. 
Hor. Most like ; it harrows me with fear and 

wonder. 
Ber. It would be spoke to. 

Mar. Question it, Horatio. 

Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of 

night, 



66 HAMLET [Act I 

Together with that fair and warlike form 
In which the majesty of buried Denmark 
Did sometimes march ? by heaven I charge thee, 
speak ! 

Mar. It is offended. 

Ber. See, it stalks away. 

Hor. Stay, speak ! speak ! I charge thee, speak ! 

[Exit Ghost 
50 Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer. 

Ber. How now, Horatio ? yon tremble and look pale ; 
Is not this something more than fantasy? 
What think you on't ? 

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe 
Without the sensible and true avouch 
Of mine own eyes. 

Mar. Is it not like the king ? 

Hor. As thou art to thyself : 
Such was the very armor he had on 
When he the ambitious Norway combated ; 
GO So frowned he once, when, in an angry parle, 
lie smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. 
'Tis strange. 

Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead 
hour, 
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. 






Scene 1] HAMLET 67 

Hor. In what particular thought to work I know 
not ; 
But, in the gross and scope of my opinion, 
This bodes some strange eruption to our state. 

Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that 
knows, 
Why this same strict and most observant watch 
So nightly toils the subject of the land, 70 

And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, 
And foreign mart for implements of war ; 
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task 
Does not divide the Sunday from the week ; 
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste 
Doth make the night joint-laborer with the day; 
Who is't that can inform me ? 

Hor. That can I ; 

At least the whisper goes so. Our last king, 
Whose image even but now appeared to us, 
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, 80 

Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride, 
Dared to the combat ; in which our valiant Hamlet — 
For so this side of our known world esteemed him — 
Did slay this Fortinbras ; who, by a sealed compact, 
Well ratified by law and heraldry, 
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands 



68 HAMLET [Act I 

Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror : 
Against the which, a moiety competent 
Was gaged by our king ; which had returned 
90 To the inheritance of Fortinbras, 

Had he been vanquisher ; as, by the same covenant 

And carriage of the article designed, 

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, 

Of unimproved mettle hot and full, 

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there 

Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes, 

For food and diet, to some enterprise 

That hath a stomach in't ; which is no other — 

As it doth well appear unto our state — 

100 But to recover of us, by strong hand 

And terms compulsative, those 'foresaid lands 
So by his father lost : and this, 1 take it, 
Is the main motive of our preparations, 
The source of this our watch, and the chief head 
Of this post-haste and romage in the land. 
Ber. I think it be no other but e'en so : 
Well may it sort that this portentous figure 
Comes armed through our watch : so like the king 
That was and is the question of these wars. 

110 Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye. 
In the most high and palmy state of Rome, 



Scene 1] HAMLET 69 

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, 

The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead 

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets ; 

As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, 

Disasters in the sun ; and the moist star, 

Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, 

Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse : 

And even the like precurse of fierce events, 

As harbingers preceding still the fates 

And prologue to the omen coming on, 

Have heaven and earth together demonstrated 

Unto our climature and countrymen. 

Re-enter Ghost 

But soft ; behold ! lo, where it comes again ! 

I'll cross it, though it blast me. — Stay, illusion ! 

If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, 

Speak to me : 

If there be any good thing to be done, 

That may to thee do ease and grace to me, 

Speak to me : ] 

If thou art privy to thy country's fate, 

Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, 

O, speak ! 

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life 



70 HAMLET [Act I 

Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, 

For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, 

[Cock crows 
Speak of it : stay, and speak ! — Stop it, Marcellus. 

Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan ? 

Hor. Do, if it will not stand. 

Ber. 'Tis here ! 

Hor. 'Tis here ! 

140 Mar. 'Tis gone ! [Exit Ghost 

We do it wrong, being so majestical, 
To offer it the show of violence ; 
For it is, as the air, invulnerable, 
And our vain blows malicious mockery. 

Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew. 

Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing 
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, 
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, 
Doth with his lofty and shrill- sounding throat 
150 Awake the god of day ; and, at his warning, 
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, 
The extravagant and erring spirit hies 
To his confine : and of the truth herein 
This present object made probation. 

Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock. 
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes 



Scene 2] HAMLET 71 

Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated, 

The bird of dawning singeth all night long; 

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad ; 

The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, 160 

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, 

So hallowed and so gracious is the time. 

Hor. So have I heard and do in part believe it. 
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, 
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill : 
Break we our watch up ; and, by my advice, 
Let us impart what we have seen to-night 
Unto young Hamlet ; for, upon my life, 
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. 
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, 170 

As needful in our loves, fitting our duty ? 

Mar. Let's do't, I pray ; and I this morning know 
Where we shall find him most conveniently. 

[Exeunt 
Scene II 
A Room of State in the Castle 
Flourish. Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polo- 
nius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, Lords, 
and Attendants 

King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's 
death 



72 HAMLET [Act I 

The memory be green, and that it us befitted 
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole king- 
dom 
To be contracted in one brow of woe, 
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature 
That we with wisest sorrow think on him, 
Together with remembrance of ourselves. 
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, 
The imperial jointress of this warlike state, 

10 Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy, — 
With one auspicious and one dropping eye, 
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, 
In equal scale weighing delight and dole, — 
Taken to wife : nor have we herein barred 
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone 
With this affair along : — for all, our thanks. 
Xow follows that you know, young Fortinbras, 
Holding a weak supposal of our worth, 
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death 

20 Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, 
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage, 
He hath not failed to pester us with message, 
Importing the surrender of those lands 
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, 
To our most valiant brother. So much for him. 



Scene 2] SAMLET 73 

Now for ourself and for this time of meeting : 

Thus much the business is ; we have here writ 

To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, — 

Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears 

Of this his nephew's purpose, — to suppress 30 

His further gait herein ; in that the levies, 

The lists, and full proportions, are all made 

Out of his subject : and we here dispatch 

You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand, 

For bearers of this greeting to old Norway, 

Giving to you no further personal power 

To business with the king more than the scope 

Of these dilated articles allow. 

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty. 

Cor., Vol. In that and all things will we show our 40 
duty. 

King. We doubt it nothing ; heartily farewell. — 
[Exeunt Voltimand and Cornelius 
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you ? 
You told us of some suit ; what is't, Laertes ? 
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, 
And lose your voice : what wouldst thou beg, Laertes, 
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking ? 
The head is not more native to the heart, 
The hand more instrumental to the mouth, 



14: HAMLET [Act I 

Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. 
What wouldst thou have, Laertes? 
50 Lae)\ Dread my lord, 

Your leave and favor to return to France ; 
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark, 
To show my duty in your coronation, 
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, 
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, 
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon. 
King. Have you your father's leave? What says 

Polonius ? 
Pol. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow 
leave 
By laborsome petition, and at last 
60 Upon his will I sealed my hard consent : 
I do beseech you, give him leave to go. 

King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes ; time be thine, 
And thy best graces spend it at thy will ! 
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son, — 

Ham. [aside. - ] A little more than kin, and less than 

kind. 
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on 

you? 
Ham. Not so, my lord ; I am too much i' the sun. 
Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, 



Scene 2] HAMLET 75 

And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. 

Do not for ever with thy vailed lids 70 

Seek for thy noble father in the dust : 

Thou know'st 'tis common ; all that lives must die, 

Passing through nature to eternity. 

Ham. Ay, madam, it is common. 

Queen. If it be, 

Why seems it so particular with thee ? 

Ham. Seems, madam ! nay, it is ; I know not 
seems. 
? Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
Xor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 80 

Xor the dejected havior of the visage, 
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, 
That can denote me truly ; these indeed seem, 
For they are actions that a man might play ; 
But I have that within which passeth show ; 
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe. 

King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, 
Hamlet, 
To give these mourning duties to your father ; 
But, you must know, your father lost a father ; 
That father lost, lost his ; and the survivor bound 90 



J6 HAMLET [Act I 

In filial obligation for some term 

To do obsequious sorrow : but to persever 

In obstinate condolement is a course 

Of impious stubbornness ; 'tis unmanly grief : 

It shows a will most incorrect to heaven ; 

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, 

An understanding simple and unschooled : 

For what we know must be, and is as common 

As any the most vulgar thing to sense, 

100 Why should we in our peevish opposition 
Take it to heart ? Fie ! 'tis a fault to heaven, 
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, 
To reason most absurd, whose common theme 
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, 
From the first corse till he that died to-day, 
This must be so. We pray you, throw to earth 
This unprevailing woe, and think of us 
As of a father ; for let the world take note, 
You are the most immediate to our throne, 

110 And with no less nobility of love, 

Than that which dearest father bears his son 
Do I impart toward you. For your intent 
In going back to school in Wittenberg, 
It is most retrograde to our desire ; 
And we beseech you, bend you to remain 



Scene 2] HAJILKT 77 

Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, 
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. 

Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet ; 
I pray thee, stay with us ; go not to Wittenberg. 

Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam. 120 

King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply ; 
Be as ourself in Denmark. — Madam, come ; 
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet 
Sits smiling to my heart ; in grace whereof, 
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day, 
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell ; 
And the king's rouse the heavens shall bruit again, 
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away. 

[Flourish. Exeunt all hut Hamlet 

Ham. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, 
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ! 130 

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed 
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! O God ! O God ! 
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
Fie on't ! O fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden 
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
Possess it merely. That it should come to this ! 
But two months dead ! nay, not so much, not two ; 
So excellent a king ; that was, to this, 



78 HAMLET [Act 1 

140 Hyperion to a satyr ; so loving to my mother 
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth ! 
Must I remember ? Why, she would hang on him, 
As if increase of appetite had grown 
By what it fed on ; and yet, within a month, — 
Let me not think An't, — Frailty, thy name is woman ! — 
A little month ! or ere those shoes were old 
With which she followed my poor father's body, 
Like Niobe, all tears ; — why she, even she, — 

150 O God ! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, 
Would have mourned longer, f— married with mine 

uncle, ' 

My father's brother, but no more like my father 
Than I to Hercules ;\ within a month? 
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, 
She married : — O, most wicked speed, to post 
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets ! 
It is not nor it cannot come to good ; 
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue ! 
Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo 
Hor. Hail to your lordship ! 

1G0 Ham. I am glad to see you well : 

Horatio, — or I do forget myself. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 79 

Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant 
ever, 

Ham. Sir, my good friend, I'll change that name 
with you. 
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? — 
Marcellus V 

Mar. My good lord, — 

Ham. I am very glad to see you. — \To Bernardo.] 
Good even, sir. — 
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg ? 

Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord. 

Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so, 170 

Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, 
To make it truster of your own report 
Against yourself : I know you are no truant. 
But what is your affair in Elsinore ? 
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. 

Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. 

Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student ; 
I think it was to see my mother's wedding. 

Hor. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon. 

Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked 
meats 180 

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven 



80 HAMLET [Act I 

Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio ! — 
My father, — methinks I see my father. 

Hor. O, where, my lord? 

Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio. 

Hor. I saw him once ; he was a goodly king. 

Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again. I 
190 Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. 

Ham. Saw? who? 

Hor. My lord, the king your father. 

Ham. The king my father I 

Hor. Season your admiration for a while 
With an at tent ear, till I may deliver, 
Upon the witness of these gentlemen, 
This marvel to you. 

Ham. For God's love, let me hear. 

Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen, 
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch, 
In the dead vast and middle of the night, 
200 Been thus encountered. A figure like your father, 
Armed at all points, exactly, cap-a-pe, 
Appears before them, and with solemn march 
Goes slow and stately by them : thrice he walked 
By their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes, 
Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled 



Scene 2] HAMLET 81 

Almost to jelly with the act of fear, 

Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me 

In dreadful secrecy impart they did ; 

And I with them the third night kept the watch : 

Where, as they had delivered, both in time, 210 

Form of the thing, each word made true and good, 

The apparition comes : I knew your father ; 

These hands are not more like. 

Ham. But where was this? 

Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we watched. 

Ham. Did you not speak to it ? 

Hor. My lord, I did ; 

But answer made it none : yet once methought, 
It lifted up its head and did address 
Itself to motion, like as it would speak ; 
But even then the morning cock crew loud. 
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away, 220 

And vanished from our sight. 

Ham. 'Tis very strange. 

Hor. As I do live, my honored lord, 'tis true ; 
And we did think it writ down in our duty 
To let you know of it. 

Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. 
Hold you the watch to-night ? 

Mar., Ber. We do, my lord. 



82 HAMLET [Act I 

Ham. Armed say you ? 

Mar., Ber. Armed, my lord. 

Ham. From top to toe ? 

Mar., Ber. My lord, from head to foot. 

Ham. Then saw you not his face ? 
230 Hor. O, yes, my lord ; he wore his beaver up. 

Ham. What, looked he frown in gly ? 

Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. 

Ham. Pale, or red? i 

Hor. Nay, very pale. 

Ham. And fixed his eyes upon you ? 

Hor. Most constantly. 

Ham. I would I had been there. 

Hor. It would have much amazed you. 

Ham. Very like, very like. — Stayed it long? 

Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a 
hundred. 

Mar., Ber. Longer, longer. 

Hor. Not when I saw't. 

Ham. His beard was grizzled ? no ? 

240 Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life, 
A sable silvered. 

Ham. I will watch to-night ; 

Perchance 'twill walk again. 

Hor. I warrant it will. 



Scene 3] HAMLET 83 

Ham. If it assume my noble father's person, 
I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape , 
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, 
If you have hitherto concealed this sight, 
Let it be tenable in your silence still ; 
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night 
Give it an understanding, but no tongue ; 
I will requite your loves. So fare you well : 250 

Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, 
I'll visit you. 

All. Our duty to your honor. 

Ham. Your loves, as mine to you : farewell. 

[Exeunt Hor., Mar., and Ber. 

My father's spirit in arms ! all is not well ; 

I doubt some foul play : would the night were come ! 

Till then sit still, my soul : foul deeds will rise, 

Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. 

[Exit 
Scene III 

A Room in Poloxius's House 

Enter Laertes and Ophelia 

Laer. My necessaries are embarked ; farewell : 

And, sister, as the winds give benefit 

And convoy is assistant, do not sleep, 

But let me hear from vou. 



84 HAMLET [Act I 

Oph. Do you doubt that ? 

Laer. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor, 
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood, 
A violet in the youth of prirny nature, 
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, 
The perfume and suppliance of a minute ; 
No more. 

Oph. Xo more but so? 

10 Laer. Think it no more : 

For nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
In thews and bulk ; but, as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mjnd and soul 
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now ; 
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch 
The virtue of his will ; but you mast fear, 
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own ; 
For he himself is subject to his birth ; 
He may not, as unvalued persons do, 

20 Carve for himself, for on his choice depends 
The safety and the health of this whole state ; 
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed 
Unto the voice and yielding of that body 
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you, 
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it, 
As he in his particular act and place 



Scene 3] HAMLET 85 

May give his saying deed ; which is no further 

Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. 

Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain, 

If with too credent ear you list his songs. 30 

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, 

And keep within the rear of your affection, 

Out of the shot and danger of desire. 

The chariest maid is prodigal enough, 

If she unmask her beauty to the moon ; 

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes ; 

The canker galls the infants of the spring, 

Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, 

And in the morn and liquid dew of youth 

Contagious blastments are most imminent. 40 

Be wary then ; best safety lies in fear ; 

Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. 

Opli. I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, 
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, 
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, 
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, 
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, 
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads 
And recks not his own rede. 

Laer. O, fear me not. 

I stay too long ; — but here my father comes. 50 



86 HAMLET [Act I 

Enter Polonius 

A double blessing is a double grace ; 
Occasion smiles upon a second leave. 

Pol. Yet here, Laertes ! aboard, aboard, for shame ; 
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, 
And you are stayed for. There ; my blessing with thee ! 
[Laying his hand on Laertes' head 
And these few precepts in thy memory 
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, 
Nor any unproportioned thought his act. 

I Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. 

3Q The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel ; 
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in, 
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. 
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice : 
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.* 
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 

/But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; 

JO For the apparel oft proclaims the man ; 
And they in France of the best rank and station 
Are most select and generous, chief in that. 



Scene 3] HAMLET 87 

Neither a borrower nor a lender be ; 
For loan oft loses both itself and friend, 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 
This above all : to thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. / 
Farewell ; my blessing season this in thee ! 

Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord. 80 

Pol. The time invites you ; go, your servants tend. 

Laer. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well 
What I have said to you. 

Oph. 'Tis in my memory locked, 

And you yourself shall keep the key of it. 

Laer. Farewell. [Exit 

Pol. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you ? 

Oph. So please you, something touching the lotd 
Hamlet. 

Pol. Marry, well bethought : 
'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late 
Given private time to you : and you yourself 90 

Have of your audience been most free and boun- 
teous : 
If it be so, — as so 'tis put on me, 
And that in way of caution, — I must tell you 
You do not understand yourself so clearly 



88 HAMLET [Act I 

As it behooves my daughter and your honor : 
What is between you? give me up the truth. 

Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders 
Of his affection to me. 

Pol. Affection ! pooh ! you speak like a green girl, 
100 Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. 

Do you believe his tenders, as you call them ? 

Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think. 

Pol. Marry, I'll teach you : think yourself a baby, 
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, 
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly ; 
Or — not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, 
Running it thus — you'll tender me a fool. 

Oph. My lord, he hath importuned me with love 
In honorable fashion. 
110 Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it ; go to, go to. 

Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, 
my lord, 
With almost all the holy vows of heaven. 

Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, 
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul 
Lends the tongue vows : these blazes, daughter, 
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both, 
Even in their promise, as it is a-making, 
You must not take for fire. From this time 



Scene 4] HAMLET 89 

Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence; 

Set your entreatments at a higher rate 120 

Than a command to parley. For lord Hamlet, 

Believe so much in him, that he is young ; 

And with a larger tether may he walk 

Than may be given you : in few, Ophelia, 

Do not believe his vows ; for they are brokers, — 

Not of that dye which their investments show, 

But mere implorators of unholy suits, 

This is for all, — 

I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, 

Have you so slander any moment's leisure, 1^0 

As to give words or talk with the lord Hamlet. 

Look to't, I charge you ; come your ways. 

Oph. I shall obey, my lord. [Exeunt 

Scene IV 

The Platform 

Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus 

Ham. The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold. 

Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air. 

Ham. What hour now ? 

Hor. I think it lacks of twelve. 

Mar. No, it is struck. 



90 HAMLET [Act I 

Hor. Indeed ? I heard it not ; it then draws near 
the season 
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk. 

[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, 
within 
What does this mean, my lord? 

Ham. The king doth w r ake to-night and takes his 
rouse, 
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels ; 
10 And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, 
The kettle-drum and .trumpet thus bray out 
The triumph of his pledge. 

Hor. Is it a custom ? 

Ham. Ay, marry, is't : 
But to my mind, though I am native here 
And to the manner born, it is a custom 
More honored in the breach than the observance. 
This heavy-headed revel east and west 
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations : 
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase 
20 Soil our addition ; and, indeed, it takes 

From our achievements, though performed at height, 

The pith and marrow of our attribute. 

So, oft it chances in particular men, 

That for some vicious mole of nature in them, 



Scene 4] HAMLET 91 

As in their birth, — wherein they are not guilty, 

Since nature cannot choose his origin — 

By the o'ergrowth of some complexion, 

Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason ; 

Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens 

The form of plausive manners ; — that these men, — 30 

Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, 

Being nature's livery, or fortune's star, — 

Their virtues else — be they as pure as grace, 

As infinite as man may undergo — 

Shall in the general censure take corruption 

From that particular fault : the dram of e'il 

Doth all the noble substance ever dout, 

To his own scandal. 

Enter Ghost 

Hor. Look, my lord, it comes. 

Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! — 
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, 40 

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, 
Be thy intents wicked or charitable, 
Thou comest in such a questionable shape 
That I will speak to thee : I'll call thee Hamlet, 
King, father ; royal Dane, O, answer me ! 
Let me not burst in ignorance ; but tell 



92 HAMLET [Act I 

Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death. 
Have burst -their cerements; why the sepulcher, 
Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urned, 
50 Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, 
To cast thee up again. What may this mean, 
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, 
Making night hideous ; and we fools of nature, 
So horridly to shake our disposition. 
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ? 
Say, why is this ? wherefore ? what should we do ? 

[Ghost beckons Hamlet 

Hor. It beckons you to go away with it. 
As if it some impart ment did desire 
To you alone. 
60 Mar. Look, with what courteous action 

It waves you to a more removed ground : 
But do not go with it. 

Hor. Xo, by no means. 

Ham. It will not speak ; then will I follow it. 

Hor. Do not, my lord. 

Ham. Why, what should be the fear ? 

I do not set my life at a pin's fee : 
And for my soul, what can it do to that. 
Beins: a thing immortal as itself? 



?cene 4] HAMLET 93 

[t waves me forth again ; I'll follow it. 

Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, 
3r to the dreadful summit of the cliff 70 

rhat beetles o'er his base into the sea, 
And there assume some other horrible form, 
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason 
And draw you into madness ? think of it ; 
The very place puts toys of desperation, 
Without more motive, into every brain 
That looks so many fathoms to the sea 
And hears it roar beneath. 

Ham. It waves me still. — 

&o on, I'll follow thee. 

Mar. You shall not go, my lord. 

Ham. Hold off your hands ! 80 

Hor. Be ruled ; you shall not go. 

Ham. My fate cries out, 

And makes each petty artery in this body 
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. 

[Ghost oeckons 
Still am I called? — unhand me, gentlemen ; 

[Breaking from them 
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me : 
I say, away ! — Go on ; I'll follow thee. 

[Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet 



94 HAMLET [Act I 

Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination. 

Mar. Let's follow ; 'tis not fit thus to obey him. 

Hor. Have after. — To what issue will this come ? 

90 Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. 

Hor. Heaven will direct it. 

Mar. Nay, let's follow him. 

[Exeunt 

Scene V 

Another part of the Platform 
Enter Ghost and Hamlet 

Ham. Where wilt thou lead me ? speak ; I'll go no 
further. 

Ghost. Mark me. 

Ham. I will. 

Ghost. My hour is almost come, 

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames 
Must render up myself. 

Ham. Alas, poor ghost ! 

Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing 
To what I shall unfold. 

Ham. Speak ; I am bound to hear. 

Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shal J 
hear. 



Scene 5] HAMLET 95 

Ham. What? 

Ghost. I am thy father's spirit ; 
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, 10 

And for the day confined to fast in fires, 
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature 
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am 
To tell the secrets of my prison-house, 
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word 
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, 
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, 
Thy knotted and combined locks to part 
And each particular hair to stand on end, 
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine : 20 

But this eternal blazon must not be 
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list ! 
If thou didst ever thy dear father love, 

Ham. O God ! 

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. 

Ham. Murder ? 

Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is, 
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. 

Ham. Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as 
swift 
As meditation or the thoughts of love, 30 

May sweep to my revenge. 



96 HAMLET [Act I 

Ghost. I find thee apt ; 

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed 
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, 
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear : 
; Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, 
A serpent stung me ; so the whole ear of Denmark 
Is by a forged process of my death 
Rankly abused ; but know thou noble youth, 
The serpent that did sting thy father's life 
40 Now wears his crown. 

Ham. O my prophetic soul ! 

My uncle ? 

Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, 
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, 
— O wicked wit and gifts that have the power 
So to seduce ! — won to his shameful lust 
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen : 

Hamlet, what a f alling-off was there ! 
From me, whose love was of that dignity 

50 That it went hand in hand even with the vow 

1 made to her in marriage ; and to decline 
Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor 
To those of mine ! 

But, soft ! methinks I scent the morning air ; 
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, 
00 My custom always in the afternoon, 



Scene 5] HAMLET 97 

Upon iny secure hour thy uncle stole, 

With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, 

And in the porches of my ears did pour 

The leperous distilment ; whose effect 

Holds such an enmity with blood of man 

That swift as quicksilver it courses through 

The natural gates and alleys of the body ; 

And with a sudden vigor it doth posset 

And curd, like eager droppings into milk, 

The thin and wholesome blood : so did it mine ; 70 

And a most instant tetter barked about, 

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, 

All my smooth body. 

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand 

Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched ; 

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, 

Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled ; 

"No reckoning made, but sent to my account 

With all my imperfections on my head. 

Ham. Oh, horrible ! Oh, horrible ! most horrible ! 80 
Ghost. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. 

But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, 

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive 

Against thy mother aught ; leave her to heaven 

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, 



98 HAMLET [Act I 

To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once ! 
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, 
90 And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire ; 

Adieu, adieu, adieu ! remember me. [Exit 

Ham. O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! What 

else ? 
And shall I couple hell? — Oh, fie! Hold, hold, my 

heart ; 
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, 
But bear me stifiiy up. Remember thee ? 
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat 
In this distracted globe. Remember thee? 
Yea, from the table of my memory 
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, 
100 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, 
That youth and observation copied there ; 
And thy commandment all alone shall live 
"Within the book and volume of my brain, 
Unmixed with baser matter : yes, by heaven ! 
O most pernicious woman ! 
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain ! 
My tables, — meet it is I set it down, 
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain ; 
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark. — 

[ Writing 



Scene 5] HAMLET 99 

So, uncle, there you are. — Now to my word ; HO 

It is Adieu, adieu ! Remember me. 
I have sworn't. 

Hor. [within] My lord, my lord ! 

Mar. [within] Lord Hamlet ! 

Hor. [within] Heaven secure him I 

Ham. So be it ! 

Hor. [within] Illo, ho, ho, my lord ! 

Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy ! come, bird, come. 

Enter Horatio and Marcellus 

Mar. How is't, my noble lord ? 

Hor. What news, my lord ? 

Ham. O, wonderful! 

Hor. Good my lord, tell it. 

Ham. No ; you'll reveal it. 

Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven. 

Mar. Nor I, my lord. 120 

Ham. How say you then ; would heart of man once 
think it ? 
But you'll be secret ? 

Hor., Mar. Ay, by heaven, my lord. 

Ham. There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Den- 
mark 

But he's an arrant knave. 
LcfC. 



100 HAMLET [Act I 

Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the 
grave, 
To tell us this. 

Ham. Why, right ; you are i' the right ; 

And so, without more circumstance at all, 
I hold it fit that we shake hands, and part; 
You, as your business and desire shall point you, — 
130 For every man has business and desire, 

Such as it is, — and for mine own poor part, 
Look you, I'll go pray. 

Hor. These are but wild and whirling words, my 
lord. 
. Ham. I'm sorry they offend you, heartily; 
Yes, faith, heartily. 

Hor. There's no offense, my lord. 

Ham. Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, 
And much offense too. Touching this vision here, 
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you ; 
For your desire to know what is between us, 
140 O'er master it as you may. And now, good friends, 
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers, 
Give me one poor request., 

Hor. What is't, my lord? We will. 

Ham. Never make known what you have seen 
to-night. 



Scene 5] HAMLET 101 

Hor., Mar. My lord, we will not. 

Ham. Nay, but swear't. 

Hor. In faith, 

My lord, not I. 

Mar. Nor I, my lord, in faith. 

Ham. Upon my sword. 

Mar. We have sworn, my lord, already. 

Ham. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed. 

Ghost, [beneath] Swear. - 

Ham. Ah, ha, boy ! say'st thou so ? art thou there, 
truepenny?— 150 

Come on ; you hear this fellow in the cellarage ; 
Consent to swear. 

Hor. Propose the oath, my lord. 

Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen. 
Swear by my sword. 

Ghost, [beneath'] Swear. 

Ham. Hie et ubiquef then we'll shift our ground. — 
Come hither, gentlemen, 
And lay your hands again upon my sword : 
Never to speak of this that you have heard; 
Swear by my sword. 160 

Ghost, [beneath'] Swear. 

Ham. Well said, old mole ! canst work i' the ground 
so fast ? 



102 HAMLET [Act I 

A worthy pioneer ! — Once more remove, good friends. 

Hor. O day and night, bnt this is wondrous strange ! 

Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. 
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
But come ; 

Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, 
170 How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, 
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet 
To put an antic disposition on, 
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, 
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake, 
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, 
As Well, well, we know ; or, We could, an if ice would; 
Or If we list to speak: or There be, an if they might; 
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note 
That you know aught of me : — this not to do, 
180 So grace and mercy at your most need help you, 
Swear. 

Ghost, [beneath"] Swear. 

Ham. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! [They swear] 
So, gentlemen, 
With all my love I do commend me to you : 
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is 
May do, to express his love and friending to you, 



Scene 5] HAMLET 103 

God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together ; 

And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. 

The time is out of joint ; — O cursed spite, 

That ever I was born to set it right ! — 190 

Nay, come, let's go together. {Exeunt 



104 HAMLET [Act II 

ACT II 

Scene I 

A Room in Polonius's House 

Enter Polonius and Reynaldo 

Pol. Give him this money and these notes, Rey- 
naldo. 

Rey. I will, my lord. 

Pol. You shall do marvelous wisely, good Reynaldo, 
Before you visit him, to make inquiry 
Of his behavior. 

Rey. My lord, I did intend it. 

Pol. Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, 
sir, 
Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris ; 
And how, and who, what means, and where they keep, 
What company, at what expense ; and finding 
10 By this encompassment and drift of question 
That they do know my son, come you more nearer 
Than your particular demands will touch it : 
Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him ; 
As thus, / know Ms father and Ms friends, 
And in part Mm. Do you mark this, Reynaldo? 

Rey. Ah, very well, my lord. 



Scene 1] HAMLET 105 

Pol. A nd in part Mm ; but, you may say, not well : 
But ift be lie I mean, he's very wild : 
Addicted so and so ; and there put on him 
What forgeries you please ; marry, none so rank 20 

As may dishonor him ; take heed of that ; 
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips 
As are companions noted and most known 
To youth and liberty. 

Rey. As gaming, my lord. 

Pol. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling, 
Fighting ; you may go so far. 

Rey. My lord, that would dishonor him. 

Pol. 'Faith, no ; as you may season it in the charge. 
You must not put another scandal on him, 
That he is open to incontinency ; 30 

That's not my meaning : but breathe his faults so 

quaintly 
That they may seem the taints of liberty; 
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind ; 
A savageness in unreclaimed blood, 
Of general assault. 

Rey. But, my good lord, — 

Pol. Wherefore should you do this ? 

Rey. Ay, my lord, 

I would know that. 



106 HAMLET [Act II 

Pol. Marry, sir, here's my drift ; 

And, I believe, it is a fetch of warrant : 
You laying these slight sullies on my son, 
40 As 'twere a thing a little soiled i' the working, 
Mark you, 

Your party in converse, him you would sound, 
Having ever seen, in the prenominate crimes 
The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured 
He closes with you in this consequence ; 
Good sir, or so ; on friend or gentleman, — 
According to the phrase or the addition 
Of man and country. 

Rey. Very good, my lord. 

Pol. And then, sir, does he this, — he does — 
50 What was I about to say ? 

By the mass, I was about to say something : — where 
did I leave ? 

Rey. At closes in the consequence, at friend or so, and 
gentleman. 

Pol. At closes in the consequence, — ay, marry ; 
He closes with you thus : — / know the gentleman ; 
I saw him yesterday, or V other day, 
Or then, or then ; with such or such ; and, as you say, 
There was he gaming, there overtook in his rouse, 
There falling out at tennis ; or so forth. — 



Scene 1] HAMLET 107 

See you now ; 

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth ; 60 

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, 

With windlaces, and with assays of bias, 

By indirections find directions out : 

So, by my former lecture and advice, 

Shall you my son. You have me, have you not ? 

Rey. My lord, I have. 

Pol. God be wi' you ; fare you well. 

Rey. Good my lord ! 

Pol. Observe his inclination in yourself. 

Rey. I shall, my lord. 

Pol. And let him ply his music. 

Rey. Well, my lord. 70 

Pol. Farewell ! — [Exit Reynaldo 

Enter Ophelia 

How now, Ophelia ! what's the matter ? 

OpTi. Oh, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted ! 

Pol. With what, in the name of God ? 

Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, 
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced ; 
No hat upon his head ; his stockings fouled, 
Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle ; 
Pale as his shirt ; his knees knocking each other ; 



108 HAMLET [Act II 

And with a look so piteous in purport 
80 As if he had been loosed out of hell 

To speak of horrors, — he comes before me. 

Pol. Mad for thy love? 

Oph. My lord, I do not know ; 

But, truly, I do fear it. 

Pol. What said he? 

Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard; 
Then goes he to the length of all his arm ; 
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow, 
He falls to such perusal of my face, 
As he would draw it. Long time stayed he so ; 
At last, — a little shaking of mine arm, 
90 And thrice his head thus waving up and down, — 
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound 
That it did seem to shatter all his bulk 
And end his being : that done, he lets me go : 
And, with his head over his shoulder turned, 
He seemed to find his way without his eyes ; 
For out o' doors he went without their help, 
Aud to the last bended their light on me. 

Pol. Come, go with me ; I will go seek the king. 
This is the very ecstasy of love ; 
100 Whose violent property fordoes itself, 

And leads the will to desperate undertakings, 






Scese 2] HAMLET 109 

As oft as any passion under heaven 

That does afflict our natures. I am sorry, — 

What, have you given him any hard words of late ? 

Oph. No, my good lord ; but, as you did command, 
I did repel his letters and denied 
His access to me. 

Pol. That hath made him mad. 

I am sorry that with better heed and judgment 
I had not quoted him : I feared he did but trifle, 
And meant to wreck thee ; but, beshrew my jealousy! 110 
By heaven, it is as proper to our age 
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions 
As it is common for the younger sort 
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the king : 
This must be known ; which, being kept close, might 

move 
More grief to hide than hate to utter love. [Exeunt 

Scene II 

A Room in the Castle 

Flourish. Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz, Guil- 
denstern, and Attendants 

King. Welcome, dear Rosencrantz, and Guilden- 
stern ! 



110 HAMLET [Act II 

Moreover that we much did long to see you, 

The need we have to use you did provoke 

Our hasty sending. Something have you heard 

Of Hamlet's transformation ; so I call it, 

Since not the exterior nor the inward man 

Resembles that it was. What it should be, 

More than his father's death, that thus hath put him 

So much from the understanding of himself, 

10 I cannot dream of : I entreat you both, 

That, being of so young days brought up with him, 
And since so neighbored to his youth and humor, 
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court 
Some little time : so by your companies 
To draw him on to pleasures ; and to gather 
So much as from occasions you may glean, 
Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus, 
That, opened, lies within our remedy. 

Queen. Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of 
you; 

20 And sure I am two men there are not living 
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you 
To show us so much gentry and good will 
As to expend your time with us awhile, 
For the supply and profit of our hope, 
Your visitation shall receive such thanks 



Scene 2] HAMLET 111 

As fits a king's remembrance. 

Eos. Both your majesties 

Might, by the sovereign power you have of us, 
Put your dread pleasures more into command 
Than to entreaty. 

Guil. But we both obey ; 

And here give up ourselves, in the full bent 30 

To lay our services freely at your feet, 
To be commanded. 

King. Thanks, Bosencrantz and gentle Guilden- 
stern. 

Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Bosen- 
crantz : 
And I beseech you instantly to visit 
My too much changed son. — Go, some of you, 
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is. 

Guil. Heavens make our presence and our prac- 
tices 
Pleasant and helpful to him ! 

Queen. Ay, amen ! 

[Exeunt Bos., Guil., and some Attendants 

Enter Polonius 

Pol. The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, 40 
Are joyfully returned. 



112 HAMLET [Act II 

Ring. Thou still hast been the father of good news, 

Pol. Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good 
liege. 
I hold my duty, as I hold my soul, 
Both to my God and to my gracious king : 
And I do think (or else this brain of mine 
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure 
As it hath used to do) that I have found 
The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy. 
50 King. Oh, speak of that : that do I long to hear. 

Pol. Give first admittance to the ambassadors ; 
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast. 

King. Thyself do grace to them, and bring them 
in. — [Exit Polonius 

He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found 
The head and source of all your son's distemper. 

Queen. I doubt it is no other but the main, — 
His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage. 

King. Well, we shall sift him. — 






Re-enter Polonius with Voltimand and Cornelius 

Welcome, my good friends ! 
Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway? 
60 Volt. Most fair return of greetings and desires. 
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress 



Scene 2] HAMLET 113 

His nephew's levies, which to him appeared 

To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack, 

But, better looked into, he truly found 

It was against your highness : whereat grieved, — 

That so his sickness, age, and impotence, 

Was falsely borne in hand, — sends out arrests 

On Fortinbras ; which he, in brief, obeys ; 

Receives rebuke from Norway ; and, in fine, 

Makes vow before his uncle never more 70 

To give the assay of arms against your majesty. 

Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy, 

Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee ; 

And his commission to employ those soldiers, 

So levied as before, against the Polack : 

With an entreaty, herein further shown, 

[Gives a paper 
That it might please you to give quiet pass 
Through your dominions for this enterprise ; 
On such regards of safety and allowance 
As therein are set down. 

King. It likes us well ; 80 

And at our more considered time we'll read, 
Answer, and think upon this business. 
Meantime we thank you for your well-took labor : 
Go to your rest ; at night we'll feast together : 



114 HAMLET [Act II 

Most welcome home ! 

[Exeunt Yoltimand and Corxelius 

Pol. This business is well ended. — 

My liege, and madam, to expostulate 
What majesty should be, what duty is, 
Why day is day, night night, and time is time, 
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time 
90 Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, 

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, 
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad : 
Mad call I it : for, to define true madness, 
What is't but to be nothing else but mad? 
But let that go. 

Queen. More matter, with less art. 

Pol. Madam, I swear I use no art at all. 
That he is mad, 'tis true ; 'tis true 'tis pity; 
And pity 'tis, 'tis true : a foolish figure ; 
But farewell it, for I will use no art. 
100 Mad let us grant him then : and now remains 
That we find out the cause of this effect ; 
Or rather say, the cause of this defect ; 
For this effect defective comes by cause : 
Thus it remains and the remainder thus. 
Perpend : 
I have a daughter, — have, while she is mine, — 



Scene 2] HAMLET 115 

Who, in her duty and obedience, mark, 

Hath given me this : now gather and surmise. 

[Reads] — To the celestial and my soul's idol, the 
most beautified Ophelia, — 110 

That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase : beautified is a vile 
phrase ; but you shall hear. Thus : 
[Reads] In her excellent white bosom, these, etc. 
Queen. Came this from Hamlet to her ?- 
Pol. Good madam, stay awhile ; I will be faithful. 

[Reads] Doubt thou the stars are fire ; 

Doubt that the sun doth move ; 
Doubt truth to be a liar ; 
But never doubt I love. 

dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers ; / have not 120 
art to reckon my groans : but that I love thee best, most 
best, believe it. Adieu. 

Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst 
this machine is to him, Hamlet. 

This in obedience hath my daughter shown me : 
And more above, hath his solicitings, 
As they fell out by time, by means, and place, 
All given to mine ear. 

King. But how hath she 

Received his love ? 



116 HAMLET [Act II 

Pol. What do you think of me ? 

130 King. As of a man faithful and honorable. 

Pol. I would fain prove so. But what might you 
think, 

When I had seen this hot love on the wing, — 

As I perceived it, I must tell you that, 

Before my daughter told me, — what might you, 

Or my dear majesty, your queen here, think, 

If I had played the desk or table-book ; 

Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb ; 

Or looked upon this love with idle sight ; 

What might you think ? No, I went round to work, 
140 And my young mistress thus I did bespeak ; 

Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy star ; 

This must not be : and then I precepts gave her 

That she should lock herself from his resort, 

Admit no messengers, receive no tokens. 

Which done, she took the fruits of my advice ; 

And he, repulsed, a short tale to make, 

Fell into a sadness ; then into a fast ; 

Thence to a watch ; thence into a weakness ; 

Thence to a lightness ; and, by this declension, 
150 Into the madness wherein now he raves 

And all we mourn for. 

King. Do you think 'tis this ? 



Scene 2] HAMLET 117 

Queen. It may be, very likely. 

Pol. Hath there been such a time, I'd fain know 
that, 
That I have positively said, ' Tis so, 
When it proved otherwise ? 

King. Not that I know. 

Pol. Take this from this, if this be otherwise. 

[Pointing to his head and shoulder 
If circumstances lead me, I will find 
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed, 
Within the center. 

King. How may we try it further ? 

Pol. You know, sometimes he walks for hours to- 
gether 160 
Here in the lobby. 

Queen. So he does, indeed. 

Pol. At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him ; 
Be you and I behind an arras then ; 
Mark the encounter : if he love her not, 
And be not from his reason fallen thereon, 
Let me be no assistant for a state, 
But keep a farm and carters. 

King. We will try it. 

Queen. But look where sadly the poor wretch comes 
reading. 



118 HAMLET [Act II 

Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away ; 
170 I'll board him presently. — Oh, give me leave ; — 

[Exeunt King, Queen, and Attendants 

Enter Hamlet, reading 

How does my good lord Hamlet ? 

Ham. Well, God-'a-mercy. 

Pol. Do you know me, my lord? 

Ham. Excellent well ; you're a fishmonger. 

Pol. Xot I, my lord. 

Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man. 

Pol. Honest, my lord ? 

Ham. Ay, sir ; to be honest, as this world goes, is to 
be one man picked out of ten thousand. 
180 Pol. That's very true, my lord. 

Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, 
being a good kissing carrion, — Have you a daughter ? 

Pol. I have, my lord. [Aside] Still harping on 
my daughter : — yet he knew me not at first ; he said 
I was a fishmonger : he is far gone, far gone : and 
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love ; 
very near this. I'll speak to him again. — What do 
you read, my lord ? 

Ham. Words, words, words. 
190 Pol. What is the matter, my lord ? 



Scene 2] HAMLET 119 

Ham. Between who? 

Pol. . I mean the matter that yon read, my lord. 

Ham. Slanders, sir : for the satirical rogue says 
here that old men have gray beards; that their faces 
are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber and 
plum-tree gum ; and that they have a plentiful lack 
of wit, together with most weak hams : all which, sir, 
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I 
hold it not honesty to have it thus set down ; for you 
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, 200 
you could go backward. 

Pol. [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is 
method in't. — Will you walk out of the air, my 
lord ? 

Ham. Into my grave ? 

Pol. Indeed, that is out o' the air. — [Aside] 
How pregnant sometimes his replies are ! a happiness 
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity 
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave 
him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting be- 210 
tween him and my daughter. — My honorable lord, 
I will most humbly take my leave of you. 

Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that 
I will more willingly part withal; except my life, ex- 
cept my life, except my life. 



120 HAMLET [Act II 

Pol. Fare you we]l, my lord. , 
Ham. These tedious old fools ! 

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 

Pol. You go to seek the lord Hamlet ; there he is. 

Eos. [To Polonius] God save you, sir! 

{Exit Polonius 
220 Guil. My honored lord ! 

Ros. My most dear lord ! 

Ham. My excellent good friends ! How dost thou, 
Guildenstern ? — Ah, Rosencrantz ? — Good lads, how 
do ye both ? 

Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth. 

Guil. Happy, in that we are not over-happy ; 
On Fortune's cap we are not the very button. 

Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe ? 

Ros. Neither, my lord. 
230 Ham. Then . you live about her waist, or in the 
middle of her favors ? What's the news ? 

Ros. None, my lord; but that the world's grown 
honest. 

Ham. Then is doomsday near ; but your news is 
not true. Let me question more in particular : what 
have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of 
Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither ? 



Scene 2] HAMLET 121 

Guil. Prison, my lord ? 

Ham. Denmark's a prison. 

Ros. Then is the world one. 240 

Ham. A goodly one ; in which there are many 
confines, wards, and dungeons ; Denmark being one 
of the worst. 

Ros. We think not so, my lord. 

Ham. Why, then, 'tis none to you : for there is 
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so ! 
to me it is a prison. 

Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one ; 'tis 
too narrow for your mind. 

Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell 250 
and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not 
that I have bad dreams. 

Guil. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for 
the very substance of the ambitious is merely the 
shadow of a dream. 

Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow. 

Ros. Truly; and I hold ambition of so airy and 
light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow. 

Ham. Then are our beggars bodies; and our 
monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars' 260 
shadows. Shall we to the court ? for, by my fay, 
I cannot reason. 



122 HAMLET [Act II 

Eos., GuiL We'll wait upon you. 

Ham. l$o such matter; I will not sort you with 
the rest of my servants ; for, to speak to you like an 
honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, 
in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at 
Elsinore ? 

R os. To visit you, my lord : no other occasion. 
270 Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks ; 
but I thank you : and sure, dear friends, my thanks 
are too dear, a half -penny. Were you not sent for? 
Is it your own inclining ? Is it a free visitation ? 
Come ; deal justly w T ith me : come, come ; nay, speak. 

GuiL W r hat should we say, my lord ? 

Ham. Why, anything, but to the purpose. You 

were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in 

your looks, which your modesties have not craft 

enough to color: I know the good king and queen 

280 have sent for you. 

Ros. To what end, my lord ? 

Ham. That you must teach me. But let me con- 
jure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the 
consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our 
ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better 
proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct 
with me, whether you were sent for, or no. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 123 

Ros. [Aside to Guildenstern] What say you ? 

Ham. [Aside'] Nay, then, I have an eye of you. — 
If you love me, hold not off. 290 

Guil. My lord, we were sent for. 

Ham. I will tell you why ; so shall my anticipation 
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king 
and queen moult no feather. I have of late, — but 
wherefore I know not, — lost all my mirth, foregone all 
custom of exercises : and, indeed, it goes so heavily 
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, 
seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most excellent 
canopy, the air, look you, — this brave o'erhanging 
firmament — this majestical roof fretted with golden 300 
fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul 
and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece 
of work is man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite 
in faculty !■ in form and moving how express and ad- 
mirable ! in action how like an angel! in apprehension 
how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon 
of animals ! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence 
of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman nei- 
ther, though by your smiling you seem to say so. 

Eos. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. 310 

Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said man 
delights not me ? 



124 HAMLET [Act II 

Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, 
what lenten entertainment the players shall receive 
from you : we coted them on the way ; and hither are 
they coming, to offer your service. 

Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome ; his 
majesty shall have tribute of me ; the adventurous 
knight shall use his foil and target; the lover shall 
320 not sigh gratis ; the humorous man shall end his part 
in peace ; the clown shall make those laugh whose 
lungs are tickle o' the sere ; and the lady shall say her 
mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt f or't. — What 
players are they ? 

Ros. Even those you were wont to take such delight 
in, the tragedians of the city. 

Ham. How chances it they travel? their residence, 
both in reputation and profit, was better both ways. 

Ros. I think their inhibition comes by the means 
330 of the late innovation. 

Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did 
when I was in the city ? Are they so followed ? 

Ros. No, indeed, they are not. 

Ham. How comes it ? Do they grow rusty ? 

Ros. Nay, their endeavor keeps in the wonted pace : 
but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that 
cry out on the top of question, and are most tyranni- 



Scene 2] HAMLET 125 

cally clapped f or't : these are now the fashion ; and so 
berattle the common stages — so they call them — that 
many, wearing rapiers, are afraid of goose-quills, and 340 
dare scarce come thither. 

Ham. What, are they children ? who maintains 
them? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the 
quality no longer than they can sing ? will they nob 
say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to 
common players — as it is most like, if their means 
are no better, — their writers do them wrong, to 
make them exclaim against their own succession ? 

R os. 'Faith, there has been much to-do on both 
sides ; and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them 350 
to controversy: there was for a while no money bid 
for argument, unless the poet and the player went to 
cuffs in the question. 

Ham. Is't possible ? 

Guil. Oh, there has been much throwing about of 
brains. 

Ham. Do the boys carry it away ? 

Ros. Ay, that they do, my lord : Hercules and his 
load too. 

Ham. It is not very strange ; for mine uncle is king 360 
of Denmark ; and those that would make mows at him 
while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an 



126 HAMLET [Act II 

hundred ducats apiece, for his picture in little. There 
is something in this more than natural, if philosophy 
could find it out. [Flourish of trumpets within 

Guil. There are the players. 

Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. 
Your hands, come : the appurtenance of welcome is 
fashion and ceremony : let me comply with you in 
370 this garb ; lest my extent to the players, which, I tell 
you, must show fairly outward, should more appear 
like entertainment than yours. You are welcome : 
but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived. 

Guil. In what, my dear lord ? 

Ham. I am but mad north-north-west ; when the 
wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. 

Enter Poloxius 

Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen ! 

Ham. Hark you, Guilden stern ; — and you too; — 
at each ear a hearer ; that great baby you see there is 
380 not yet out of his swaddling-clouts. 

Ros. Happily he's the second time come to them ; 
for they say an old man is twice a child. 

Ham. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the 
players ; mark it. — You say right, sir ; o' Monday 
morning; 'twas so, indeed. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 127 

Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you. 

Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you. When 
Roscius was an actor in Rome, — 

Poh The actors are come hither, my lord. 

Ham. Buz, buz ! 390 

Pol. Upon mine honor, — 

Ham. Then came each actor on his ass, — 

Pol. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, 
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical- 
pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical- 
pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited : Seneca 
cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the 
law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men. 

Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure 
hadst thou ! 400 

Pol. What treasure had he, my lord? 

Ham. Why — 

One fair daughter, and no more, 
The which he loved passing well. 

Pol. \_Aside~\ Still on my daughter. 

Ham. Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah? 

Pol. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a 
daughter that I love passing well. 

Ham. Nay, that follows not. 

Pol. What follows then, my lord? 410 



128 HAMLET [Act II 

Ham. Why, 

As by lot, God wot, 

and then, you know, 

It came to pass, as most like it icas, — 

The first row of the pious chanson will show you 
more : for look, where my abridgment comes. 

Enter four or Jive Players 

You are welcome, masters ; welcome, all : — I am 
glad to see ye well : — welcome, good friends. — O, my 
old friend! Thy face is valanced since I saw thee 

420 last ; com'st thou to beard me in Denmark? — What ! 
my young lady and mistress ! By-'r-lady, your lady- 
ship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by 
the altitude of a ch opine. Pray God, your voice, like 
a piece of un current gold, be not cracked within the 
ring. — Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to't 
like French falconers, fly at anything we see : we'll 
have a speech straight : come, give us a taste of your 
quality ; come, a passionate speech. 
1 Play. What speech, my lord ? 

430 Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, — but 
it was never acted ; or, if it was, not above once ; for 
the play, I remember, pleased not the million ; 'twas 
caviare to the general: but it was, — as I received it, 



Scene 2] HAMLET 129 

and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in 
the top of mine, — an excellent play, well digested in 
the scenes ; set down with as much modesty as cun- 
ning. I remember, one said there were no sallets in 
the lines, to make the matter savory ; nor no matter 
in the phrase that might indict the author of affecta- 
tion ; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as 440 
sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. 
One speech in it I chiefly loved : 'twas iEneas' tale to 
Dido ; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks 
of Priam's slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin 
at this line ; let me see, let me see ; — 

The rugged Pyrrhus like the Hyrcanian beast. — 
'tis not so ; it begins with Pyrrhus : — 

The rugged Pyrrhus, — he, whose sable arms, 

Black as his purpose, did the night resemble 

When he lay couched in the ominous horse, — 450 

Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared 

With heraldry more dismal : head to foot 

Now is he total gules ; horridly tricked 

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons ; 

Baked and impasted with the parching streets, 

That lend a tyrannous and damned light 

To their lord's murder : roasted in wrath and fire, 

And thus oversized ivith coagulate gore, 



130 HAMLET [Act II 

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus 
\ Old grandsire Priam seeks. 

So proceed you. 

Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken ; with good 
accent and good discretion. 

1 Play. Anon he finds him 
Striking too short at Greeks ; his antique sword, 
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, 
Bepugnant to command: unequal matched. 
Pyrrhus at Priam drives ; in rage strikes wide; 
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword 

» TJie unnerved father falls. TJien senseless Hium, 

Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top 
Stoops to his base ; and with a hideous crash 
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear : for, lo ! his sword f 
Which was declining on the milky head 
Of reverend Priam, seemed V the air to stick : 
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood: 
And, like a neutral to his will and matter, 
Did nothing. 
But, as we often see, against some storm, 

I A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, 

The bold wind sjyeechless, and the orb below 
As hush as death : anon the dreadful thunder 
Doth rend the region : so, after Pyrrhus' pause, 



Scene 2] HAMLET 131 

Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work; 

And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall 

On Mars' s armor, forged for proof eterne, 

With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword 

Now falls on Priam. — 

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune ! All you gods, 

In general synod, take away her power ; 490 

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, 

And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, 

As low as to the fiends ! 

Pol. This is too long. 

Ham. It shall to the barber's with your beard. — 
Pr'ythee, say on : he's for a jig or a tale, or he sleeps : 
— say on ; come to Hecuba. 

1 Play. But who, who, had seen the mobled queen — 

Ham. The mobled queen f 

Pol. That's good : mobled queen is good. 500 

1 Play. Pun barefoot up and down, threatening the 
flame 
With bisson rheum ; a clout about that head, 
Where late the diadem stood ; and, for a robe, 
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins, 
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up ; — 
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped, 
''Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounced : 



132 HAMLET [Act II 

But if the gods themselves did see her then, 
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport 
510 In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, 
The instant burst of clamor that she made, — 
Unless things mortal move them not at all, — 
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, 
And passion in the gods, 

Pol. Look, whether he has not turned his color and 
has tears in's eyes. — Pray you, no more. 

Ham. 'Tis well ; I'll have thee speak out the rest 
soon. — Good my lord, will you see the players well 
bestowed ? Do you hear, let them be well used ; for 
520 they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time : 
after your death you were better have a bad epitaph 
than their ill report while you lived. 

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their 
desert. 

Ham. Odd's bodikins, man, much better ! Use 
every man after his desert, and who should 'scape 
whipping ? Use them after your own honor and dig- 
nity : the less they deserve, the more merit is in your 
bounty. Take them in. 
530 Pol. Come, sirs. 

Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to- 
morrow. [Exit Pol., with some of the Players] 



Scene 2] HAMLET 133 

[Aside to 1 Player] Dost thou hear me, old friend ; 
can you play The Murder of Gonzago t 

1 Play. Ay, my lord. 

Ham. [Aside] We'll ha't to-morrow night. You 
could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or 
sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert ih't, 
could you not ? 

1 Play. Ay, my lord. 540 

Ham. [Aside] Very well. — Follow that lord; and 
look you mock him not. [Exit Player] My good 
friends [to Eos. and Gull.], I'll leave you till night: 
you are welcome to Elsinore. 

Ros. Good my lord! 

Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you ! — 

[Exeunt Rosen, and Gull. 
Xow I am alone. 
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! 
Is it not monstrous, that this player here, 
Bat in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
Could force his soul so to his own conceit 550 

That from her working all his visage wanned; 
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, 
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting 
With forms to his conceit ? And all for nothing ! 
For Hecuba ! 



134 HAMLET [Act II 

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, 

That he should weep for her ? What would he do. 

Had he the motive and the cue for passion 

That I have ? He would drown the stage with tears, 

560 And cleave the general ear with horrid speech ; 
Make mad the guilty and appal the free, 
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed 
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, 
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, 
Like John-a-dreaius, unpregnant of my cause, 
And can say nothing ; no, not for a king, 
Upon whose property, and most dear life, 
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward? 
Who calls me villain ? breaks my pate across ? 

570 Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? 

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the 

throat, 
As deep as to the lungs ? Who does me this ? 
Ha! 

'Swounds, I should take it : for it cannot be 
But I am pigeon -live red, and lack gall 
To make oppression bitter ; or, ere this, 
I should have fatted all the region kites 
With this slave's offal : bloody, bloody villain ! 
Ptemorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain ! 



Scene 2] HAMLET 135 

O, vengeance ! 580 

Why, what an ass am I ! this is most brave ; 

That I, the son of a dear father murdered, 

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, 

Must fall a-cursing, like a very trull, 

A scullion ! 

Fie upon't ! foh ! About, my brain ! I have heard 

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play, 

Have by the very cunning of the scene 

Been struck so to the soul that presently 

They have proclaimed their malefactions ; 590 

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak 

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players 

Play something like the murder of my father 

Before mine uncle : I'll observe his looks ; 

I'll tent him to the quick ; if he but blench, 

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen 

May be the devil : and the devil hath power 

To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps 

Out of my weakness, and my melancholy, 

As he is very potent with such spirits, 600 

Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds 

More relative than this. The play's the thing 

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. 

[Exit 



136 HAMLET [Act III 



ACT III 

Scene I 

A Room in the Castle 

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosen- 
crantz, and Guildenstern 

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance, 
Get from him why he puts on this confusion, 
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet 
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy ? 

Ros. He does confess he feels himseK distracted, 
But from what cause he will by no means speak. 

Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded ; 
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, 
When we would bring him on to some confession 
Of his true state. 
10 Queen. Did he receive you well ? 

Ros. Most like a gentleman. 

Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. 

Ros. Niggard of question ; but of our demands 
Most free in his reply. 

Queen. Did you assay him to any pastime? 

it os. Madam, it so fell out that certain players 



Scene 1] HAMLET 137 

We o'er-r aught on the way ; of these we told 

And there did seem in him a kind of joy 

To hear of it ; they are about the court, 

And, as I think, they have already order 20 

This night to play before him. 

Pol. 'Tis most true ; 

And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties 
To hear and see the matter. 

King. With all my heart ; and it doth much con- 
tent me 
To hear him so inclined — 
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, 
And drive his purpose on to these delights. 

Ros. We shall, my lord. 

[Exeunt Rosex. and Gull. 

King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too ; 

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, 30 

That he, as 'twere by accident, may here 
Affront Ophelia. 

Her father and myself (lawful espials) 
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, 
We may of their encounter frankly judge, 
And gather by him, as he is behaved, 
If 't be the affliction of his love or no 
That thus he suffers for. 



138 HAMLET [Act III 

Queen. I shall obey you. — 

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish 
40 That your good beauty be the happy cause 

Of Hamlet's wildness ; so shall I hope your virtues 
Will bring him to his wonted way again, 
To both your honors. 

Oph. Madam, I wish it may. 

[Exit Queen 
Pol. Ophelia, walk you here. — Gracious, so please 
you, 
We will bestow ourselves. [To Ophelia] Read on 

this book, 
That show of such an exercise may color 
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this, — 
'Tis too much proved, — that with devotion's visage 
And pious action we do sugar o'er 
The devil himself. 
50 King. [Aside'] Oh, 'tis too true ! 

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience ! 
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, 
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it 
Than is my deed to my most painted word. 
O heavy burden ! 

Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord. 
[Exeunt King and Polonius 



Scene 1] HAMLET 139 

Enter Hamlet 

Ham. To be, or not to be, — that is the question : 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 60 

And, by opposing end them ? — To die, — to sleep, — 
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished. To die ; — to sleep ; — 
To sleep ! perchance to dream ! ay, there's the rub ; 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause : there's the respect 
That makes calamity of so long life ; 70 

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, 
The insolence of office, and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 
But that the dread of something after death, 



140 HAMLET [Act III 

80 The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
No traveler returns, puzzles the will, 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of ? 
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, 
And thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard their currents turn awry 
And lose the name of action. — Soft you now ! 
90 The fair Ophelia ! — Nymph, in thy orisons 
Be all my sins remembered. 

Op h. Good my lord, 

How does your honor for this many a day? 

Ham. I humbly thank you ; well, well, well. 

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours 
That I have longed long to re-deliver ; 
I pray you now, receive them. 

Ham. No, not I ; I never gave you aught. 

Oph. My honored lord, I know right well you did ; 
And with them words of so sweet breath composed 
100 As made the things more rich : their perfume lost, 
Take these again ; for to the noble mind 
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
There, my lord. 



Scene 1] HAMLET 141 

Ham. Ha, ha ! are you honest ? 

Oph. My lord? 

Ham. Are you fair? 

Oph. What means your lordship ? 

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty 
should admit no discourse to your beauty. 

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce 110 
than with honesty ? 

Ham. Ay, truly ; for the power of beauty will 
sooner transform honesty from what it is than the 
force of honesty can translate beauty into his like- 
ness ; this was sometime a paradox, but now the time 
gives it proof. I did love you once. 

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. 

Ham. You should not have believed me ; for virtue 
cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish 
of it : T Toyed. you not . 120 

Oph. I was the more deceived. 

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery ; I am myself indiffer- 
ent honest ; but yet I could accuse me of such things 
that it were better my mother had not borne me ; I 
am very proud, revengeful, ambitious ; with more 
offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them 
in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act 
them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling: 



142 HAMLET [Act III 

between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, 
130 all ; believe none of us. Go tby ways to a nunnery. 
Where's your father ? 

Oph. At home, my lord. 

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may 
play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell. 

Oph. Oh, help him, you sweet heavens ! 

Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague 
for thy dowry : be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as 
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a 
nunnery, go; farewell. Or, "if thou wilt needs marry, 
140 marry a fool ; for wise men know well enough what 
monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go ; and 
quickly too. Farewell. 

Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him ! 

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well 
enough ; God hath given you one face, and you make 
yourselves another ; you jig x you amble, and you lisp, 
and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wan- 
tonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't ; it 
hath made me mad. I say we will have no more mar- 
150 riages ; those that are married already, all but one, 
shall live ; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nun- 
nery, go. ***** [Exit 

Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 



Scene 1] HAMLET 143 

The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword ; 

The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 

The glass of fashion and the mold of form, 

The observed of all observers, quite, quite, down ! 

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, 

That sucked the honey of his music vows, 

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 160 

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh ; 

That unmatched form and feature of blow T n youth 

Blasted with ecstasy ; Oh, woe is me, 

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! 

Re-enter King and Polonius 

King. Love ? his affections do not that way tend; 
Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, 
Was not like madness. There's something in his soul 
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood ; 
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose 
Will be some danger ; which for to prevent, 170 

I have in quick determination 
Thus set it down : he shall with speed to England 
For the demand of our neglected tribute : 
Haply, the seas and countries different 
With variable objects shall expel 
This something-settled matter in his heart, 



14-4 HAMLET [Act III 

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus 
From fashion of himself. What think you on't ? 
Pol. It shall do well ; but yet do I believe 

180 The origin and commencement of his grief 

Sprung from neglected love. — How now, Ophelia, 
You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said ; 
We heard it all. — My lord, do as you please ; 
But, if you hold it fit, after the play, 
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him 
To show his grief ; let her be round with him ; 
And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear 
Of all their conference. If she find him not, 
To England send him, or confine him where 
Your wisdom best shall think. 

190 King. It shall be so : 

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go. 

[Exeunt 

Scene II 

A Hall in the Castle 
Enter Hamlet and certain Players 

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced 
it to you, trippingly on the tongue ; but, if you mouth 
it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town- 



Scene 2] HAMLET 145 

crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too 
much with your hand, thus : but use all gently : for 
in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the 
whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and be- 
get a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, 
it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig- 
pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to 10 
split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most 
part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb- 
shows and noise ; I could have such a fellow whipped 
for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod; pray 
you, avoid it. 

1 Play. I warrant your honor. 

Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own dis- 
cretion be your tutor ; suit the action to the word, the 
word to the action ; with this special observance, that 
you o'erstep not the modesty of nature ; for anything 20 
so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose 
end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 
'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her 
own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age 
and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, 
this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the 
unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve ; 
the censure of the which one must in your allowance 



146 HAMLET [Act III 

o'erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh, there be 
30 players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, 
and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither 
having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Chris- 
tian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed 
that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had 
made men and not made them well, they imitated 
humanity so abominably. 

1 Play. I hope w T e have reformed that indifferently 
with us, sir. 

Ham. Oh, reform it altogether. And let those 
40 that play your clowns, speak no more than is set 
down for them ; for there be of them that will them- 
selves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spec- 
tators to laugh too, though in the mean time some 
necessary question of the play be then to be con- 
sidered ; that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful 
ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you 
ready. [Exeunt Players 

Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern 
How now, my lord ! will the king hear this piece of 
work ? 
50 Pol. And the queen too, and that presently. 

Ham. Bid the players make haste. — [Exit Polo- 
nius] Will you two help to hasten them? 



Scene 2] HAMLET 147 

Ros., Guil. We will, my lord. 

[Exeunt Rosen, and Guil. 

Ham. What ho! Horatio! 

Enter Horatio 

Hot. Here, sweet lord, at your service. 

Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man 
As e'er my conversation coped withal. 

Hor. Oh, my dear lord, — 

Ham. Nay, do not think I natter; 

For what advancement may I hope from thee, 
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits 60 

To feed and clothe thee ? Why should the poor be 

nattered ? 
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, 
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee 
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear ? 
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice 
And could of men distinguish, her election 
Hath sealed thee for herself ; for thou hast been 
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing ; 
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards 
Hast ta'en with equal thanks ; and blest are those 70 
Whose blood and judgment are so w r ell commingled 
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man 



148 HAMLET [Act III 

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, 
As I do thee. — Something too much of this. — 
There is a play to-night before the king ; 
One scene of it comes near the circumstance 
Which I have told thee of my father's death. 

80 1 pr'ythee, when thou see'st that act a-foot, 
Even with the very comment of thy soul 
Observe mine uncle ; if his occulted guilt 
Do not itself unkennel in one speeeh, 
It is a damned ghost that we have seen, 
And my imaginations are as foul 
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note ; 
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face, 
And after we will both our judgments join 
In censure of his seeming. 

Hor. Well, my lord ; 

90 If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing, 
And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft. 

Ham. They are coming to the play; I must be idle : 
Get you a place. 

Danish march ; flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, 
Ophelia, Rosencrantz,Guildenstern, an d other 
Lords attendant, with the Guard carrying torches 



Scene 2] HAMLET 149 

King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ? 

Ham. Excellent, i' faith ; of the chameleon's dish : 
I eat the air, promise-crammed : you cannot feed 
capons so. 

King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; 
these words are not mine. 

Ham. No, nor mine now. — [To Polonius] My 100 
lord, you played once in the university, you say? 

Pol. That did I, my lord, and was accounted a 
good actor. 

Ham. And what did you enact? 

Pol. I did enact Julius Cassar ; I was killed i' the 
Capitol ; Brutus killed me. 

Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital 
a calf there. — Be the players ready? 

Ros. Ay, my lord ; they stay upon your patience. 

Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. 110 

Ham. No, good mother ; here's metal more at- 
tractive. 

Pol. [_To the King] Oh, ho ! do you mark that ? 

Oph. You are merry. 

Ham. Who, I? 

Oph. Ay, my lord. 

Ham. O God, your only jig-maker. What should 
a man do but be merry? for, look you, how cheer- 



150 HAMLET [Act III 

fully my mother looks, and my father died within 's 
120 two hours. 

Opli. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. 

Ham. So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, 
for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens ! die two 
months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's 
hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half 
a year ; but by-'r-lady, he must build churches then ; 
or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the 
hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, "For, O, for, O, the 
hobby-horse is forgot." 

Hautboys play. The dumb show enters 

Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly ; the Queen 
embracing him and he her. She kneels, and makes 
show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, 
and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down 
upon a bank of flowers; she, seeing him asleep, 
leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his 
crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, 
and exit. The Queen returns : finds the King dead, 
and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with 
some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to 
lament with her. The dead body is carried away. 
The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts ; she seems 



Scene 2] HAMLET 151 

loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his 
love, \_Exeu71t 

Oph. What means this, my lord? 130 

Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho ; it means 
mischief. 

Oph. Belike this show imports the argument of the 

play. 

Enter Prologue 

Ham. We shall know by this fellow; the players 
cannot keep counsel ; they'll tell all. 

Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant ? 
Ham. Ay, or any show. 
Oph. I'll mark the play. 

Pro. For us, and for our tragedy, 140 

Here stooping to your clemency, 
We beg your hearing patiently. 
Ham. Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring ? 
Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord. 
Ham. As woman's love. 

Enter tico Players, King and Queen 

P. King. Full thirty times hath Phcebus' 1 cart gone 
round 
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus'' orbed ground, 
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen 



152 HAMLET [Act III 

About the world have times twelve thirties been, 
150 Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands 
Unite commutual in most sacred bands. 
P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon 
Make us again count o'er ere love be done ! 
But, ivoe is me, you are so sick of late, 
So far from cheer and from your former state, 
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust, 
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must : 
For ivoman's fear and love holds quantity ; 
In neither aught, or in extremity. 
160 Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know, 
And as my love is sized, my fear is so. 
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear, 
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there. 
P. King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly 
too ; 
My operant powers their functions leave to do, 
And thou shalt live in this fair ivorld behind, 
Honored, beloved; and haply, one as kind 
For husband shalt thou — 
P. Queen. 0, confound the rest! 

Such love must needs be treason in my breast ; 
170 In second husband let me be accurst ! 

None ived the second but who kilVd the first. 

Ham. \_Aside'] Wormwood, wormwood. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 153 

P. Queen. The instances that second marriage move 
u Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. 
P. King. / do believe you think what now you speak, 

But, what we do determine oft voe break. 

Purpose is but the slave to memory, 

Of violent birth but poor validity ; 

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, 

But fall unshaken when they mellow be. 180 

Most necessary His that we forget 

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt ; 

What to ourselves in passion we propose, 

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. 

The violence of either grief or joy 

Their own enactures with themselves destroy ; 

Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; 

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. 

This world is not for aye, nor His not strange 

That even our loves should with our fortunes change, 190 

For His a question left us yet to prove, 

Whether love lead fortune or else fortune love. 

The great man down, you mark his favorite flies ; 

The poor advanced makes friends of enemies ; 

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend; 

For who not needs shall never lack a friend; 

And ivho in want a hollow friend doth try, 

Directly seasons him his enemy. 



I 

154 HAMLET [Act III | 

But, orderly to end ivhere I begun, — 
200 Our wills and fates do so contrary run, 

That our devices still are overthrown ; 

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own; 

So think thou wilt no second husband wed, 

But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead. 
P. Queen. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light! 

Sport and repose lock from me day and night ! 

To desperation turn my trust and hope ! 

An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope ! 

Each opposite that blanks the face of joy 
210 Meet ivhat I would have well and it destroy ! 

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, 

If, once a widow, ever I be wife ! 

Ham. If she should break it now ! 

P. King. 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a 
while ; 
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile 
The tedious day with sleep. [Sleeps 

P. Queen. Sleep rock thy brain, 

And never come mischance between us twain. 

[Exit 

Ham. Madam, how like you this play ? 
Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. 
220 Ham. Oh, but she'll keep her word. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 155 

King. Have you heard the argument ? Is there no 
offense in't ? 

Ham. No, no ; they do but jest, poison in jest ; no 
offense i' the world. 

King. What do you call the play ? 

Ham. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how ? Tropically. 
This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna ; 
Gonzago is the duke's name ; his wife, Baptista : you 
shall see anon ; 'tis a knavish piece of work ; but what 
of that ? your majesty and we that have free souls, it 230 
touches us not : let the galled jade wince, our withers 
are un wrung. — r 

Enter Lucianus 

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king. 

Oph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord. 

Ham. I could interpret between you and your love, 
if I could see the puppets dallying. 

Oph. Still better, and worse. 

Ham. Begin, murderer ; leave thy damnable faces, 
and begin. Come ; — the croaking raven doth bellow 
for revenge. 240 

Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs jit, and time 
agreeing ; 
Confederate season, else no creatures seeing ; 



156 HAMLET [Act III 

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, 
With Hecate s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, 
Thy natural magic and dire property, 
On ivholesome life usurp immediately. 

[Pours the poison into the sleeper' 1 s ear 

Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. 
His name's Gonzago ; the story is extant, and writ in 
choice Italian ; you shall see anon how the murderer 
250 gets the love of Gonzago's wife. 

Oph. The king rises ! 

Ham. What, frighted with false fire ! 

Queen. How fares my lord? 

Pol. Give o'er the play. 

King. Give me some light. — Away ! 

All. Lights, lights, lights ! 

[Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio 

Ham. Why, let the strucken deer go weep, 
The hart ungalled play ; 
For some must watch, while some must sleep ; 
260 So runs the world away. 

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, — if the 
rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me, — with two 
Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellow- 
ship in a cry of players, sir? 






Scene 2] HAMLET 157 

Hor. Half a share. 
Ham. A whole one, ay. 

For thou dost know, O Damon dear, 

This realm dismantled was 
Of Jove himself ; and now reigns here 

A very, very — pajock. 270 

Hor. You might have rhymed. 
Ham. O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for 
a thousand pound. Didst perceive ? 
Hor. Very well, my lord. 
Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning, — 
Hor. I did very well note him. 
Ham. Ah, ha ! — Come, some music ! come, the 
recorders ! 

For if the king like not the comedy, 
Why then, belike, — he likes it not, perdy. 280 

Come, some music ! 

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 
Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you. 
Ham. Sir, a whole history. 
Guil. The king, sir, — 
Ham. Ay, sir, what of him ? 

Guil. Is in his retirement marvelous distempered. 
Ham. With drink, sir? 



158 HAMLET [Act III 

Guil. No, my lord, rather with choler. 

Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more richer 
290 to signify this to his doctor ; for, for me to put him 
to his purgation, would perhaps plunge him into far 
more choler. 

Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into some 
frame, and start not so wildly from my affair. 

Ham. I am tame, sir : pronounce. 

Guil. The queen, your mother, in most great afflic- 
tion of spirit, hath sent me to you. 

Ham. You are welcome. 

Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the 
300 right breed. If it shall please you to make me a 
wholesome answer, I will do your mother's command- 
ment ; if not, your pardon and my return shall be the 
end of my business. 

Ham. Sir, I cannot. 

Guil. What, my lord ? 

Ham. Make you a wholesome answer ; my wit's 

diseased; but, sir, such answer as I can make you 

shall command ; or rather, as you say, my mother : 

therefore no more, but to the matter ; my mother, you 

310 say, — 

Ros. Then thus she says : your behavior hath struck 
her into amazement and admiration. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 159 

Ham. O wonderful son, that can so astonish a 
mother ! But is there no sequel at the heels of this 
mother's admiration ? Impart. 

Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet, 
ere you go to bed. 

Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. 
Have you any further trade with us ? 

R os. My lord, you once did love me. 320 

Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers. 

Ros. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper ? 
you do surely bar the door upon your own liberty, if 
you deny your griefs to your friend. 

Ham. Sir, I lack advancement. 

Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice 
of the king himself for your succession in Den- 
mark ? 

Ham. Ay, sir, but While the grass grows, — the prov- 
erb is something musty. — 330 

Re-enter Players with recorders 

Oh, the recorders ! let me see one. — To withdraw 
with you : — why do you go about to recover the wind 
of me, as if you would drive me into a toil ? 

Guil. Oh, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love 
is too unmannerly. 



160 HAMLET [Act III 

Ham. I do not well understand that. Will you 
play upon this pipe ? 

Guil. My lord, I cannot. 

Ham. I pray you. 
340 Guil. Believe me, I cannot. 

Ham. I do beseech you. 

Ros. I know no touch of it, my lord. 

Ham. "Tis as easy as lying ; govern these ventages 
with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your 
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. 
Look you, these are the stops. 

Guil. But these cannot I command to any utter- 
ance of harmony ; I have not the skill. 

Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing 
350 you make of me ! You would play upon me ; you 
would seem to know my stops ; you would pluck out 
the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me from 
my lowest note to the top of my compass : and there is 
much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet 
cannot you make it speak. S'blood ! do you think I 
am easier to be played on than a pipe ? Call me what 
instrument you will, though you can fret me, you can- 
not play upon me. — 



Scene 2] HAMLET 161 

Re-enter Polonius 

God bless you, sir ! 

Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with you, 360 
and presently. 

Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in 
shape of a camel? 

Pol. By the mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed. 

Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. 

Pol. It is backed like a weasel. 

Ham. Or like a whale? 

Pol. Very like a whale. 

Ham. Then will I come to my mother by and by. — 
[Aside] They fool me to the top of my bent. — I will 370 
come by and by. 

Pol. I will say so. 

Ham. By and by is easily said. [Exit Polonius] 
— Leave me, friends. 

[Exeunt Eos., Guil., Hor., etc. 
'Tis now the very witching time of night, 
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out 
Contagion to this world ; now could I drink hot blood, 
And do such bitter business as the day 
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my 
mother. — 



162 HAMLET [Act III 

380 O heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever 
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom ; 
Let me be cruel, not unnatural : 
I will speak daggers to her, but use none ; 
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites ; 
How in my words soever she be shent, 
To give them seals never, my soul, consent f 

[Exit 

Scene III 

A Room in the Castle 

Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern 

King. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us 
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you, 
I your commission w T ill forthwith dispatch, 
And he to England shall along with you; 
The terms of our estate may not endure 
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow 
Out of his lunacies. 

Gull. We will ourselves provide : 

Most holy and religious fear it is 
To keep those many many bodies safe, 
10 That live and feed upon your majesty. 

Bos, The single and peculiar life is bound 



Scene 3] HAMLET 163 

With all the strength and armor of the mind 

To keep itself from noyance ; but much more 

That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest 

The lives of many. The cease of majesty 

Dies not alone ; but like a gulf doth draw 

What's near it with it ; it is a massy wheel, 

Fixed on the summit of the highest mount, 

To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things 

Are mortised and adjoined ; which, when it falls, 20 

Each small annexment, petty consequence, 

Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone 

Did the king sigh, but with a general groan. 

King. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage ; 
For we will fetters put upon this fear, 
Which now goes too free-footed. 

Ros., Gull. We will haste us. 

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 

Enter Polonius 

Pol. My lord, he's going to his mother's closet ; 
Behind the arras I'll convey myself 
To hear the process ; I'll warrant she'll tax him home ; 
And, as you said, and wisely was it said, 30 

'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, 
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear 



164 HAMLET [Act III 

The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege ; 
I'll call upon you e'er you go to bed, 
And tell you what I know. 

King. Thanks, dear my lord. 

[Exit Polonius 
Oh, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven ; 
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, 
A brother's murder ! — Pray can I not, 
Though inclination be as sharp as will ; 

40 My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, 
And, like a man to double business bound, 
I stand in pause where I shall first begin, 
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand 
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, 
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens 
To wash it white as snow ? Whereto serves mercy 
But to confront the visage of offense ? 
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force, 
To be forestalled ere we come to fall, 

50 Or pardoned being done ? Then I'll look up ; 
My fault is past. But, oh, what form of prayer 
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder ? 
That cannot be, since I am still possessed 
Of those effects for which I did the murder, — 
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. 



Scene 3] HAMLET 165 

May one be pardoned and retain the offense ? 
In the corrupted currents of this world, 
Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice, 
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself 
Buys out the law ; but 'tis not so above ; 60 

There, is no shuffling, there the action lies 
In his true nature ; and we ourselves compelled, 
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults 
To give in evidence. What then ? what rests ? 
Try what repentance can : what can it not ? 
Yet what can it when one can not repent? 
O wretched state ! O bosom black as death ! 
O limed soul that, struggling to be free, 
Art more engaged! Help, angels! make assay! 
Bow, stubborn knees ; and, heart with strings of steel, 70 
Be soft as sinews of the new born babe ! 
All may be well ! [Retires, and kneels 

Enter Hamlet 
Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying ; 
And now I'll do't ; — and so he goes to heaven ; 
And so am I revenged ? That would be scanned : 
A villain kills my father ; and for that, 
I, his sole son, do this same villain send 
To heaven. 
Oh, this is hire and salary, not revenge. 



166 HAMLET [Act III 

80 He took my father grossly, full of bread, 

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May ; 
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven ? 
But in our circumstance and course of thought, 
'Tis heavy with him ; and am I then revenged, 
To take him in the purging of his soul, 
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage ? 
No. 

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent : 
When he is drunk-asleep or in his rage; 

90 At gaming, swearing ; or about some act 
That has no relish of salvation in't : 
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven ; 
And that his soul may be as damned, and black, 
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays. — 
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. 

[Exit 

King. [Rising'] My words fly up, my thoughts 
remain below ; 
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. 

[Exit 



Scene 4] HAMLET 167 

Scene IV 

The Queen's Closet 
Enter Queen and Polonius 

Pol. He will come straight. Look you lay home to 
him. 
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, 
And that your grace hath screened and stood between 
Much heat and him. I'll 'sconce me even here. 
Pray you, be round with him. 

Ham. [ Within'] Mother, mother, mother ! 

Queen. I'll warrant you ; 

Fear me not. Withdraw, I hear him coming. 

[Polonius hides behind the arras 

Enter Hamlet 

Ham. Now, mother, what's the matter? 
Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 
Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended. 10 
Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle 

tongue. 
Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. 
Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet? 
Ham. What's the matter now ? 

Queen. Have you forgot me ? 



168 HAMLET [Act III 

Ham. No, by the rood, not so : 

You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife ; 
And — would it were not so ! — you are my mother. 
Queen. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can 

speak. 
Ham. Come, come, and sit you down ; you shall 
not budge ; 
You go not till I set you up a glass 
20 Where you may see the inmost part of you. 

Queen. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder 
me? 
Help, help, ho ! 

Pol. [Behind] What, ho ! help, help, help ! 
Ham. [Drawing'] How now; a rat? 

Dead, for a ducat, dead. 

[Hamlet makes a pass through the arras 
Pol. [Behind] Oh, I am slain. 

[Falls and dies 
Queen. O me, what hast thou done ? 
Ham. Nay, I know not ; 

Is it the king ? 

[Lifts up the arras, and discovers Polonius 
Queen. Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this ! 
Ham. A bloody deed ! almost as bad, good mother, 
30 As kill a king, and marry with his brother. 



Scene 4] HAMLET 169 

Queen. As kill a king ? 

Ham. Ay, lady, 'twas my word. — 

\_To Pol.] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, fare- 
well! 
I took thee for thy better ; take thy fortune ; 
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger. — 
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down, 
And let me wring your heart : for so I shall 
If it be made of penetrable stuff; 
If damned custom have not brazed it so 
That it is proof and bulwark against sense. 

Queen. What have I done, that thou dar'st wag 
thy tongue 40 

In noise so rude against Jiie ? 

Ham. Such an act 

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, 
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose 
From the fair forehead of an innocent love 
And sets a blister there ; makes marriage vows 
As false as dicers' oaths ; oh, such a deed 
As from the body of contraction plucks 
The very soul, and sweet religion makes 
A rhapsody of words ; heaven's face doth glow ; 
Yea, this solidity and compound mass, 50 

With tristful visage, as against the doom, 



170 HAMLET [Act III 

Is thought-sick at the act. 

Queen. Ay me, what act, 

That roars so loud, and thunders in the index ? 

l/* Ham. Look here upon this picture and on this ; — 
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. 
See what a grace was seated on this brow : 
Hyperion's curls ; the front of Jove himself ; 
An eye like Mars, to threaten or command ; 
A station like the herald Mercury, 

60 New -lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 
A combination and a form, indeed, 
Where every god did seem to set his seal 
To give the world assurance of a man : 
This was your husband. -»- Look you now, what 

follows : 
Here is your husband ; like a mildewed ear, 
Blasting his wholesome brother. — Have you eyes ? 
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, 
And batten on this moor ? Ha ! have you eyes ? 
You cannot call it love, for at your age 

70 The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, 
And waits upon the judgment ; and what judgment 
Would step from this to this ? Sense sure you have, 
Else could you not have motion : but sure that sense 
Is apoplexed ; for madness would not err, 



Scene 4] HAMLET 171 

Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thralled 

But it reserved some quantity of choice, 

To serve in such a difference. What devil was't 

That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind ? 

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, 

Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, 80 

Or but a sickly part of one true sense 

Could not so mope. 

O shame ! where is thy blush ? Rebellious hell, 

If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, 

To naming youth let virtue be as wax, 

And melt in her own fire ; proclaim no shame 

When the compulsive ardor gives the charge ; 

Since frost itself as actively doth burn, 

And reason panders will. 

Queen, O Hamlet, speak no more ; 

Thou turnest mine eyes into my very soul ; 90 

And there I see such black and grained spots 
As will not leave their tinct. 

Ham. ^ay, but to live 

Stewed in corruption — 

Queen. Oh, speak to me no more ; 

These words like daggers enter in mine ears ; 
No more, sweet Hamlet ! 

Ham. A murderer and a villain ; 






172 HAMLET [Act III 

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe 
Of your precedent lord ; a vice of kings, 
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, 
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, 
And put it in his pocket ! 
100 Queen. Xo more ! 

Ham. A king of shreds and patches : — 

Enter Ghost 

Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, 
You heavenly guards ! — What would your gracious 
figure ? 

Queen. Alas, he's mad. 

Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, 
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by 
The important acting of your dread command? 
Oh, say ! 

Ghost. Do not forget : this visitation 
110 Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. 
But look ! amazement on thy mother sits ; 
Oh, step between her and her fighting soul ; 
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works : 
Speak to her, Hamlet. 

Ham. How is it with you, lady ? 

Queen. Alas, how is't with you, 



Scene 4] HAMLET 173 

That you do bend your eye on vacancy, 

And with the incorporal air do hold discourse ? 

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep ; 

And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, 

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, 120 

Starts up and stands on end. O gentle son, 

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper 

Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 

Ham. On him ! on him ! — Look you, how pale he 
glares ! 
tlis form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, 
Would make them capable. — Do not look upon me ; 
Lest with this piteous action you convert 
My stern effects ; then what I have to do 
Will want true color ; tears, perchance, for blood. 

Queen. To whom do you speak this ? 

Ham. Do you see nothing there ? 130 

Queen. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I see. 

Ham. Nor did you nothing hear ? 

Queen. No, nothing but ourselves. 

Ham. Why, look you there ! look how it steals 
away! 
My father, in his habit as he lived ! 
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal ! 

{Exit Ghost 



174 HAMLET [Act III 

Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain ; 
This bodiless creation ecstasy 
Is very cunning in. 

Ham. Ecstasy ! 

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 
140 And make as healthful music ; it is not madness 
That I have uttered ; bring me to the test, 
And I the matter will re-word, which madness 
AVould gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, 
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, 
That not your trespass but my madness speaks ; 
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, 
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, 
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven ; 
Repent what's past ; avoid what is to come ; 
150 And do not spread the compost on the weeds, 

To make them ranker. — Forgive me this my virtue : 

For in the fatness of these pursy times 

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg ; 

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. 

Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in 
twain. 

Ham. Oh, throw away the worser part of it, 
And live the purer with the other half. 
Good night : but go not to mine uncle's bed ; 



Scene 4] HAMLET 175 

Assume a virtue, if you have it not. 

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, 160 

Of habits evil, is "angel yet in this, 

That to the use of actions fair and good 

He likewise gives a frock, or livery, 

That aptly is put on. Kef rain to-night, 

And that shall lend a kind of easiness 

To the next abstinence ; the next more easy ; 

For use almost can change the stamp of nature, 

And either shame the devil, or throw him out 

With wondrous potency. Once more, good night ; 

And when you are desirous to be blessed, 170 

I'll blessing beg of you. — For this same lord, 

[Pointing to Polonius 
I do repent ; but heaven hath pleased it so, — 
To punish me with this and this with me, 
That I must be their scourge and minister. 
I will bestow him, and will answer well 
The death I gave him — So again, good night ! — 
[Aside] I must be cruel, only to be kind ; 
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. — 
One word more, good lady. 

Queen. What shalll do? 

Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do : 180 
Let the bloat king 



176 HAMLET [Act III 

Make you to ravel all this matter out, 
That I essentially am not in madness, 
But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know : 
For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, 
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, 
Such dear concernings hide ? who would do so ? 
Xo, in despite of sense and secrecy, 
Unpeg the basket on the house's top, 
190 Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape, 
To try conclusions, in the basket creep 
And break your own neck down. 

Queen. Be thou assured, if words be made of 
breath, 
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe 
What thou hast said to me. 

Ham. I must to England; you know that? 

Queen. Alack, 

I had forgot ; 'tis so concluded on. 

Ham. There's letters sealed; and my two school- 
fellows, — 
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged, — 
200 They bear the mandate ; they must sweep my way. 
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work, 
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer 
Hoist with his own petar : and 't shall go hard, 



Scene 4] HAJSILET 177 

But I will delve one yard below their mines, 

And blow them at the moon. Oh, 'tis most sweet, 

When in one line two crafts directly meet. 

This man shall set me packing. 

Mother, good night. — Indeed, this counselor 

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, 

Who was in life a foolish prating knave. 210 

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you : — 

Good night, mother. 

[Exeunt severally ; Hamlet dragging in Poloxius 



178 HAMLET [Act IV 

ACT IV 

Scene I 

A Room in the Castle 

Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz, and Guilden- 

STERN 

King. There's matter in these sighs; these pro- 
found heaves 
You must translate ; 'tis fit we understand them. 
Where is your son ? 

Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while. 

[Exeunt Ros. and Guil. 
Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night ? 
King. What, Gertrude ? How does Hamlet ? 
Queen. Mad as the sea and wind, when both 
contend 
Which is the mightier : in his lawless fit, 
Behind the arras hearing something stir, 
10 Whips out his rapier, cries A rat, a rat! 
And in this brainish apprehension kills 
The unseen good old man. 

King. O heavy deed ! 

It had been so with us, had we been there ; 



Scene 1] HAMLET 179 

His liberty is full of threats to all ; 

To you yourself, to us, to every one. 

Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered? 

It will be laid to us, whose providence 

Should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt, 

This mad young man ; but so much was our love, 

We would not understand what was most fit, 20 

But, like the owner of a foul disease, 

To keep it from divulging, let it feed 

Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone ? 

Queen. To draw apart the body he hath killed ; 
O'er whom his very madness, like some ore 
Among a mineral of metals base, 
Shows itself pure ; he weeps for what is done. 

King. O Gertrude, come away ! 
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, 
But we will ship him hence ; and this vile deed 30 

We must, with all our majesty and skill, 
Both countenance and excuse. — Ho! Guildenstern ! 

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 

Friends both, go join you with some further aid ; 
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain, 
And from his mother's closet hath he dragged him. 
Go seek him out ; speak fair, and bring the body 



180 HA1ILET [Act IV 

Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this. — 

[Exeunt Ros. and Guil. 
Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends ; 
And let them know, both what we mean to do, 
40 And what's untimely done ; so, haply, slander — 
Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, 
As level as the cannon to his blank, 
Transports his poison'd shot, — may miss our name, 
And hit the woundless air. Oh, come away ! 
My soul is full of discord and dismay. [Exeunt 



Scene II 

Another Room in the Castle 

Enter Hamlet 

Ham. Safely stowed. 

Ros., Guil. [Within] Hamlet! lord Hamlet! 
Ham. But soft, what noise? who calls on Hamlet? 
Oh, here they come. 

Enter Rosexcrantz and Guildenstern 

Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the dead 

body ? 
Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 181 

Ros. Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence 
And bear it to the chapel. 

Ham. Do not believe it. 

Eos. Believe what ? 10 

Ham. That I can keep your counsel and not mine 
own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! — what 
replication should be made by the son of a king? 

Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord ? 

Ham. Ay, sir ; that soaks up the king's countenance, 
his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the 
king best service in the end; he keeps them, like an 
ape doth nuts, in the corner of his jaw ; first mouthed, 
to be last swallowed ; when he needs what you have 
gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall 20 
be dry again. 

Ros. I understand you not, my lord. 

Ham. I am glad of it ; a knavish speech sleeps in a 
foolish ear. 

Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body is, 
and go with us to the king. 

Ham. The body is with the king, but the king is 
not with the body. The king is a thing — 

Guil. A thing, my lord ? 

Ham. Of nothing : bring me to him. Hide fox, and 30 
all after. [Exeunt 



182 HAMLET [Act IV 

Scene III 

Another Roo?n in the Castle 

Enter King, attended 

King. I have sent to seek him, and to find the body. 
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose ! 
Yet must not we put the strong law on him ; 
He's loved of the distracted multitude, 
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes ; 
And where 'tis so, the offender's scourge is weighed, 
But never the offense. To bear all smooth and even, 
This sudden sending him away must seem 
Deliberate pause ; diseases desperate grown 
10 By desperate appliance are relieved, 
Or not at all. — 






Enter Rosencrantz 

How now ! what hath befallen ? 
Ros. Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord, 
We cannot get from him. 

King. But where is he ? 

Ros. Without, my lord; guarded, to know your 

pleasure. 
King. Bring him before us. 
Ros. Ho, Guildenstern ! bring in my lord. 



Scene 3] HAMLET 183 

Enter Hamlet and Guildexsterx 

King. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius? 

Ham. At supper. 

King. At supper ? Where? 

Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eateu ; a 20 
certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. 
Your worm is your only emperor for diet ; we fat all 
creatures else to fat us ; and we fat ourselves for mag- 
gots : your fat king and your lean beggar is but varia- 
ble service, two dishes, but to one table ; that's the 
end. 

King. Alas, alas ! 

Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat 
of a king ; and eat of the fish that hath fed of that 
worm. 30 

King. What dost thou mean by this ? 

Ham. Nothing, but to show you how a king may go 
a progress through a beggar. 

King. Where is Polonius ? 

Ham. In heaven; send thither to see : if your mes- 
senger find him not there, seek him i' the other place 
yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this 
month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into 
the lobby. 



184 HAMLET [Act IV 

40 King. Go seek him there. [_To some Attendants 

Ham. He will stay till ye conie. 

[Exeunt Attendants 

King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety, — 
Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve 
For that which thou hast done, — must send thee 

hence 
With fieiy quickness: therefore, prepare thyself; 
The bark is ready and the wind at help, 
The associates tend, and everything is bent 
For England. 

Ham. For England ? . 

King. Ay, Hamlet. 

Ham. Good. 

King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. 
50 Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. — 

But come ; for England ! — Farewell, dear mother. 

King. Thy loving father, Hamlet. 

Ham. My mother : father and mother is man and 
wife ; man and wife is one flesh ; and so, my mother. 
— Come, for England. [Exit 

King. Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed 
aboard ; 
Delay it not, I'll have him hence to-night : 
Away ; for everything is sealed and done 



Scene 4] HAMLET 185 

That else leans on the affair : pray you, make haste. — 

[Exeunt Ros. and Guil. 
And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught, — 60 
As my great power thereof may give thee sense, 
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red 
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe 
Pays homage to us — thou may'st not coldly set 
Our sovereign process ; which imports at full, 
By letters conjuring to that effect, 
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England ; 
For like the hectic in my blood he rages, 
And thou must cure me ; till I know 'tis done, 
Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun. [Exit 70 

Scene TV 

A Plain in Denmark 

Enter Fortinbras, a Captain, and Soldiers marching 

For. Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king ; 
Tell him that, by his license, Fortinbras 
Claims the conveyance of a promised march 
| Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous. 
If that his majesty would aught with us, 
We shall express our duty in his eye, 
And let him know so. 



186 HAMLET [Act IV 

Cap. I will do't, my lord. 

For. Go softly on. 

[Exeunt Fortlnbras and Soldiers 

Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and 
Others 

Ham. Good sir, whose powers are these ? 

Cap. They are of Norway, sir. 
10 Ham. How purposed, sir, 

I pray you ? 

Cap. Against some part of Poland. 

Ham. Who 

Commands them, sir ? 

Cap. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras. 

Ham. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, 
Or for some frontier ? 

Cap. Truly to speak, and with no addition, 
We go to gain a little patch of ground 
That hath in it no profit but the name. 
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it ; 
20 Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole 
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee. 

Ham. Why, then the Polack never will defend it. 

Cap. Yes, 'tis already garrisoned. 



Scene 4] HAMLET 187 

Ham. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand 
ducats 
Will not debate the question of this straw ; 
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, 
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without 
Why the man dies. — I humbly thank you, sir. 

I Cap. God be wi' you, sir. [Exit 

Eos. Wiirt please you go, my lord ? 

Ham. I will be with you straight. Go a little 
before. [Exeunt all except Hamlet 30 

ow all occasions do inform against me, 
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, 
If his chief good and market of his time 
Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more. 
Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, 
Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capability and godlike reason 
To fust in us unused. Xow, whether it be 
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
Of thinking too precisely on the event, — 40 

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom 
And ever three parts coward, — I do not know 
Why yet I live to say, " This thing's to do," 
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, 
To do't. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me ; 



188 HAMLET [Act IV 

Witness this army, of such mass and charge, 
Led by a delicate and tender prince, 
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puffed, 
Makes mouths at the invisible event; 

50 Exposing what is mortal and unsure 

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, 
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great 
Is not to stir without great argument, 
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 
When honor's at the stake. How stand I then, 
That have a father killed, a mother stained, 
Excitements of my reason and my blood, 
And let all sleep? while to my shame I see 
The imminent death of twenty thousand men, 

60 That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, 

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot 

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, 

Which is not tomb enough and continent 

To hide the slain? — Oh, from this time forth, 

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth ! [Exit 



Scene 5] HAMLET 189 

Scene V 

Elsinore. A Room in the Castle 

Enter Queen and Horatio 

Queen. I will not speak with her. 

Hor. She is importunate, indeed distract ; 
Her mood will needs be pitied. 

Queen. What would she have ? 

Hor. She speaks much of her father ; says she 
hears 
There's tricks i' the world ; and hems, and beats her 

heart ; 
Spurns enviously at straws ; speaks things in doubt, 
That carry but half sense ; her speech is nothing, 
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move 
The hearers to collection ; they aim at it, 
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts ; 10 
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield 

them, 
Indeed would make one think there would be thought, 
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. 
'Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew 
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds. 

Queen. Let her come in. [Exit Horatio 



190 HAMLET [Act IV 

To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is, 
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss ; 
So full of artless jealousy is guilt, 
20 It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. 

Re-enter Horatio with Ophelia 

Oph. Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark? 
Queen. How now, Ophelia? 
Oph. [Sings] 

How should I your true love know 

From another one f 
By his cockle-hat and staff 

And his sandal shoon. 

Queen. Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song? 
Oph. Say you? nay, pray you, mark. 

[Sings] He is dead and gone, lady, 
30 He is dead and gone ; 

At his head a grass-green turf, 
At his heels a stone. 
O, ho ! 

Queen. Nay, but, Ophelia, — 

Oph. Pray you, mark. 

[Sings] White his shroud as the mountain snow. - 



Scene 5] HAMLET 191 

Enter King 

Queen. Alas, look here, my lord. 
Oph. [Sings] 

Larded with sweet flowers ; 
Which beivept to the grave did go, 
With true love showers. 

King. How do you, pretty lady ? 40 

Oph. Well, God 'ield you ! They say the owl was 
a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but 
know not what we may be. God be at your table ! 

King. Conceit upon her father. 

Oph. Pray you, let us have no words of this; but 
when they ask you what it means, say you this : 

[Sings] To-morrow is Saint Valentine 's day, 
All in the morning betime, 
And I a maid at your window, 

To be your Valentine, 50 

King. How long hath she been thus ? 

Oph. I hope all will be well. We must be patient : 

but I cannot choose but weep, to think they should 

lay him i' the cold ground. My brother shall know 

.of it ; and so I thank you for your good counsel. — 



192 HAMLET [Act IV 

Come, my coach ! — Good night, ladies ; good night, 

sweet ladies ; good night, good night. [Exit 

King. Follow her close ; give her good watch, I 

pray you — [Exit Horatio 

Oh, this is the poison of deep grief ; it springs 
60 All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude, 
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, 
But in battalions ! First, her father slain ; 
Xext, your son gone ; and he most violent author 
Of his own just remove : the people muddied, 
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and 

whispers, 
For good Polonius' death; and we have done but 

greenly, 
In hugger-mugger to inter him : poor Ophelia 
Divided from herself and her fair judgment, 
Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts ; 
70 Last, and as much containing as all these, 
Her brother is in secret come from France : 
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, 
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear 
With pestilent speeches of his father's death ; 
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared, 
Will nothing stick our persons to arraign 
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this, 



Scene 5] HAMLET 193 

Like to a murdering-piece, in many places 

Gives us superfluous death. [.4 noise ivithin 

Queen. Alack, what noise is this? 

King. Where are my Switzers ? Let them guard 
the door. — 80 

Enter a Gentleman 

What is the matter ? 

Gent. Save yourself, my lord ; 

The ocean, overpeering of his list, 
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste 
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head, 
O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord; 
And as the world were now but to begin, 
Antiquity forgot, custom not known, 
The ratiflers and props of every word, 
They cry, Choose we : Laertes shall be king ! 
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds, 90 
Laertes shall be king, Laertes king I 

Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! 
Oh, this is counter, you false Danish dogs ! 

\Noise within, 

King. The doors are broke. 

Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following 



194 HAMLET [Act IV 

Laer. Where is the king? — Sirs, stand you all 

without. 
Danes. No, let's come in. 

Laer. I pray you, give me leave. 

Danes. We will, we will. 

[They retire without the door 
Laer. I thank you : keep the door. — O thou vile 
king, 
Give me my father. 

Queen. Calmly, good Laertes. 

Laer. That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me 
bastard. 
100 King. What is the cause, Laertes, 
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like? 
Let him go, Gertrude ; do not fear our person ; 
There's such divinity doth hedge a king, 
That treason can but peep to what it would, 
Acts little of his will. — Tell me, Laertes, 
Why thou art thus incensed. — Let him go, Ger- 
trude. — 
Speak, man. 

Laer. Where's my father ? 

King. Dead. 

Queen. But not by him. 

King. Let him demand his fill. 



Scene 5] HAMLET 195 

Laer. How came he dead? Ill not be juggled 
with. 110 

To hell, allegiance ! vows, to the blackest devil ! 
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit I 
I dare damnation. To this point I stand, 
That both the worlds I give to negligence, 
Let come what comes : only I'll be revenged 
Most throughly for my father. 

King. Who shall stay you ? 

Laer. My will, not all the world : 
And for my means, I'll husband them so well, 
They shall go far with little. 

King. Good Laertes, 120 

If you desire to know the certainty 
Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge, 
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, 
Winner and loser ? 

Laer. None but his enemies. 

King. Will you know them then ? 

Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my 
arms ; 
And like the kind life-rendering pelican 
Repast them with my blood. 

King. Why, now you speak 

Like a good child and a true gentleman. 



196 HAMLET [Act IV 

130 That I am guiltless of your father's death, 
And am most sensibly in grief for it, 
It shall as level to your judgment pierce, 
As da} 7 does to your eye. 

Danes. \Within\ Let her come in. 

Laer. How now ! what noise is that ? — 

Re-enter Ophelia 

O heat, dry up my brains ! tears, seven times salt, 
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye ! — 
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, 
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May ! 
140 Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia ! — 
O heavens ! is't possible a young maid's wits 
Should be as mortal as an old man's life ? 
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine, 
It sends some precious instance of itself 
After the thing it loves. 
Oph. [Sings] 

They bore him barefaced on the bier ; 
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny ; 
And on his grave rains many a tear ; — 

Fare you well, my dove ! 

Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade 
150 revenge, 



Scene 5] HAMLET 197 

It could not move thus. 
Oph. [Sings'] 

You must sing a-down a-down, 
An you call him a-down-a. 

O, how the wheel becomes it ! It is the false steward, 
that stole his master's daughter. 

Laer. This nothing's more than matter. 

Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance : 
pray, love, remember : and there is pansies, that's 
for thoughts. 

Laer. A document in madness ; thoughts and re- 160 
membrance fitted. 

Oph. There's fennel for you, and columbines ; 
there's rue for you ; and here's some for me ; we may 
call it herb-of-grace o' Sundays ; oh, you must wear 
your rue with a difference. — There's a daisy ; I would 
give you some violets ; but they withered all when my 
father died ; they say he made a good end, — 
[Sings] For bonny sweet Bobin is all my joy. 

Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, 
She turns to favor and to prettiness. 170 

Oph. [Sings] 

And will he not come again ? 
And will he not come again f 



198 HAMLET [Act IV 

No, no, he is dead, 
Go to thy death-bed, 
He never will come again. 

His beard was ivhite as snow ; 

All flaxen wets his poll ; 
He is gone, he is gone, 
And toe cast away moan ! 
180 God ha"* mercy on his soul ! 

And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' 
you ! [Exit 

Laer. Do you see this, O God? 
King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief, 
Or you deny me right. Go but apart, 
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will, 
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me. 
If by direct or by collateral hand 
They find us touched, we will our kingdom give, 
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours, 
190 To you in satisfaction ; but if not, 

Be you content to lend your patience to us, 
And we shall jointly labor with your soul 
To give it due content. 

Ijter. Let this be so ; 

His means of death, his obscure burial — 



Scene 6] HAMLET 199 

No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, 
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation — 
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth, 
That I must call't in question. 

King. So you shall ; 

And where the offense is, let the great axe fall. 
I pray you, go with me. [Exeunt 200 

Scene VI 

Another* Room in the Castle 

Enter Horatio and a Servant 

Hor. What are they that would speak with rne? 

Serv. Sailors, sir ; 
They say they have letters for you. 

Hor. Let them come in. — 

[Exit Servant 
I do not know from what part of the world 
I should be greeted, if not from lord Hamlet. 

Enter Sailors 

1 Sail. God bless you. sir. 
Hor. Let him bless thee too. 

1 Sail. He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a 
letter for you, sir, — it comes from the ambassador 



200 HAMLET [[Act IV 

10 that was bound for England, — if your name be 
Horatio, as I am let to know it is. 
Hor. [Reads] 

Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give 
these fellows some means to the king ; they have letters 
for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of 
very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding our- 
selves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valor ; in 
the grapple I boarded them; on the instant, they got 
clear of our ship ; so I alone became their prisoner. They 
have dealt with me like thieves of mercy ; but they knew 
20 what they did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let 
the king have the letters I have sent ; and repair thou to 
me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I 
have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; 
yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. 
These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Bosen- 
crantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England ; 
of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell. 

He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet. 

Come, I will make you way for these your letters ; 
30 And do't the speedier, that you may direct me 
To him from whom you brought them. 

[Exeunt 



Scene 7] HAMLET 201 

Scene VII 

Another Room in the Castle 
Enter King and Laertes 

King. Now must your conscience my acquittance 
seal, 
And you must put me in your heart for friend, 
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear, 
That he which hath your noble father slain 
Pursued my life. 

Laer. It well appears ; but tell me 

Why you proceeded not against these feats, 
So crimeful and so capital in nature, 
As by your safety, wisdom, all things else , 
You mainly were stirred up. 

King. Oh, for two special reasons, 

Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed 10 
But yet to me they are strong. The queen his 

mother 
Lives almost by his looks ; and for myself, — 
My virtue or my plague, be it either which, 
She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, 
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, 
I could not but by her. The other motive, 



202 HA1LLET [Act IV 

Why to a public count I might not go. 

Is the great love the general gender bear him ; 

Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, 

20 Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, 
Convert his gyves to graces ; so that my arrows, 
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind, 
Would have reverted to my bow again, 
And not where I had aimed them. 

Laer. And so have I a noble father lost ; 
A sister driven into desperate terms, 
Whose worth, if praises may go back again, 
Stood challenger on mount of all the age 
For her perfections. — But my revenge will come. 
King. Break not your sleeps for that: you must not 

30 think 

That we are made of stuff so flat and dull 

That we can let our beard be shook with danger 

And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more ; 

I loved your father, and we love ourself ; 

And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine, — 

Enter a Messenger 

How now, what news ? 

Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet ; 

This to your majesty; this to the queen. 



Scene 7] HAMLET 203 

King. From Hamlet ? Who brought them ? 

Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say ; I saw them not. 
They were given me by Claudio, he received them 40 
Of him that brought them. 

King. Laertes, you shall hear them. — 

Leave us. [Exit Messenger 

[Beads'] High and mighty, You shall know I am set 
naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave 
to see your kingly eyes ; when I shall, first asking your 
pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden and 
more strange return. Hamlet. 

What should this mean ? Are all the rest come back ? 
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing? 

Laer. Know you the hand ? 

King. 'Tis Hamlet's character. Naked, — 50 

And in a postscript here he says alone. 
Can you advise me ? 

Laer. I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come : 
It warms the very sickness in my heart, 
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, 
Thus didest thou. 

King. If it be so, Laertes, — 

As how should it be so ? how otherwise ? — 
Will you be ruled by me ? 



204 HAMLET [Act IV 

Laer. Ay, my lord ; 

So you will not o'er-rule me to a peace. 
60 King. To thine own peace. If he be now returned, — 
As checking at his voyage, and that he means 
Xo more to undertake it, — I will work him 
To an exploit now ripe in my device, 
Under the which he shall not choose but fall ; 
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe ; 
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice, 
And call it accident. 

Laer. My lord, I will be ruled ; 

The rather, if you could devise it so 
That I might be the organ. 

King. It falls right. 

70 You have been talked of since your travel much, 
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality 
Wherein, they say, you shine ; your sum of parts 
Did not together pluck such envy from him 
As did that one, and that, in my regard, 
Of the un worthiest siege. 

iMer. What part is that, my lord? 

King. A very riband in the cap of youth, 
Yet needful too ; for youth no less becomes 
The light and careless livery that it wears 
r I'li an settled age his sables and his weeds, 



Scene 7] HAMLET 205 

Importing health and graven ess. — Two months since, 80 

Here was a gentleman of Normandy ; — 

I've seen myself, and served against, the French, 

And they can well on horseback ; but this gallant 

Had witchcraft in't ; he grew unto his seat ; 

And to such wondrous doing brought his horse, 

As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured 

With the brave beast ; so far he topped my thought, 

That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, 

Come short of what he did. 

Laer. A Norman, was't? 

King. A Norman. 90 

Laer. Upon my life, Lamond. 

King. The very same. 

Laer. I know him well; he is the brooch, indeed, 
And gem of all the nation. 

King. He made confession of you, 
And gave you such a masterly report 
For art and exercise in your defense, 
And for your rapier most especially, 
That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed, 
If one could match you ; the scrimers of their nation. 
He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye, 100 

If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his 
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy, 



206 HAMLET [Act IV 

That he could nothing do but wish and beg 
Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him. 
Now, out of this. — 

Laer. What out of this, my lord? 

King. Laertes, was your father dear to you? 
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, 
A face without a heart? 

Laer. Why ask you this ? 

King. Not that I think you did not love your father, j 
110 Hut that I know love is begun by time, 
And that I see, in passages of proof, 
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. 
There lives within the very flame of love 
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it; 
And nothing is at a like goodness still ; 
For goodness, growing to a plurisy, 
Dies in his own too-much : that we would do 
We should do when we would ; for this would changes, 
And hath abatements and delays as many 
120 As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; 
And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh, 
That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer : 
Hamlet comes back : what would you undertake 
To show yourself your father's son in deed 
More than in words? 



Scene 7] HAMLET 207 

Laer. To cut his throat i' the church. 

King. No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize ; 
Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes, 
Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. 
Hamlet, returned, shall know you are come home ; 
We'll put on those shall praise your excellence, 130 

And set a double varnish on the fame 
The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, to- 
gether, 
And wager on your heads ; he, being remiss, 
Most generous, and free from all contriving, 
Will not peruse the foils ; so that with ease 
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose 
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice 
Requite him for your father. 

Laer. I will do't ; 

And for that purpose I'll anoint my sword. 
I bought an unction of a mountebank, 140 

So mortal that but dip a knife in it, 
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, 
Collected from all simples that have virtue 
Under the moon, can save the thing from death 
That is but scratched withal : I'll touch my point 
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, 
It may be death. 



208 HAMLET [Act IV 

King. Let's further think of this ; 

Weigh what convenience both of time and means 
May fit ns to our shape. If this should fail, 
150 And that our drift look through our bad performance, 
'Twere better not assayed ; therefore this project 
Should have a back or second that might hold, 
If this should blast in proof. Soft ! — let me see ! — 
We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings — 
I ha't : 

When in your motion you are hot and dry, — 
As make your bouts more violent to that end, — 
And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him 
A chalice for the nonce ; whereon but sipping, 
160 If he by chance escape your venomed stuck, 

Our purpose may hold there. But stay, what noise ? — 

Enter Queen 
How now, sweet queen ! 

Queen. One woe doth tread upon another's heel, 
So fast they follow. — Your sister's drowned, Laertes. 

Laer. Drowned ! — Oh, where ? 

Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook, 
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ; 
There with fantastic garlands did she come 
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, 
170 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 




' There with fantastic garlands did she come 
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples. ' : 



Scene 7] HAMLET 209 

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them ; 

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; 

TThen down her weedy trophies and herself 

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, 

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; 

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, 

As one incapable of her own distress, 

Or like a creature native and indued 

Unto that element; but long it could not be, 180 

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 

Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay 

To muddy death. 

Laer. Alas then, is she drowned ? 

Queen. Drowned, drowned. 

Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, 
And therefore I forbid my tears ; but yet 
It is our trick ; nature her custom holds, 
Let shame say what it will; when these are gone, 
The woman will be out. — Adieu, my lord ; 
I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze, 190 

But that this folly douts it. [Exit 

King. Let's follow, Gertrude ; 

How much I had to do to calm his rage ! 
Xow fear I this will give it start again ; 
Therefore let's follow. [Exeunt 



210 HAMLET [Act V 



ACT V 

Scene I 
A Church-Yard 
Enter two Clowns, with spades, fyc. 

1 Clown. Is she to be buried in Christian burial 
that willfully seeks her own salvation? 

2 Clo. I tell thee she is ; and therefore make her 
grave straight; the crowner hath sat on her, and 
finds it Christian burial. 

1 Clo. How can that be, unless she drowned her- 
self in her own defense? 

2 Clo. Why, 'tis found so. 

1 Clo. It must be se offendendo ; it cannot be else. 
10 For here lies the poiut : if I drown myself wittingly, 

it argues an act; and an act hath three branches; it 
is, to act, to do, and to perform : argal, she drowned 
herself wittingly. 

2 Clo. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver, — 

1 Clo. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: 
here stands the man ; good : if the man go to this 
water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he 
goes; mark you that: but if the water come to him 



Scene 1] HAMLET 211 

and drown him, he drowns not himself : argal, he that 
is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own 20 
life. 

2 Clo. But is this law? 

1 Clo. Ay, marry, is't ; crowner's-quest law. 

2 Clo. Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had 
not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried 
out of Christian burial. 

1 Clo. Why, there thou say'st : and the more pity 
that great folk should have countenance in this world 
to drown or hang themselves more than their even 
Christian. — Come, my spade. There is no ancient 30 
gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers ; 
they hold up Adam's profession. 

2 Clo. Was he a gentleman ? 

1 Clo. A' was the first that ever bore arms. 

2 Clo. Why, he had none. 

1 Clo. W 7 hat, art a heathen? How dost thou un- 
derstand the scripture ? The scripture says Adam 
digged ; could he dig without arms ? I'll put another 
question to thee; if thou answerest me not to the 
purpose, confess thyself — 40 

2 Clo. Go to. 

1 Clo. What is he that builds stronger than either 
the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter? 



212 HAMLET [Act V 

2 Clo. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives 
a thousand tenants. 

1 Clo. I like thy wit w T ell, in good faith ; the gal- 
lows does well ; but how does it well ? it does well to 
those that do ill ; now thou dost ill to say the gallows 
is built stronger than the church : argal, the gallows 

50 may do well to thee. To't again ; come. 

2 Clo. ' Who builds stronger than a mason, a ship- 
wright, or a carpenter ? ' 

1 Clo. Ay, tell me that and unyoke. 

2 Clo. Marry, now I can tell. 

1 Clo. To't. 

2 Clo. Mass, I cannot tell. 

Enter Hamlet and Horatio, at a distance 

1 Clo. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your 

dull ass will not mend his pace with beating: and 

when you are asked this question next, say a grace- 

60?naker ; the houses that he makes last till doomsday. 

Go, get thee to Yaughan ; fetch me a stoup of liquor. 

[Exit 2 Clown 
1 Clo. [Digs, and sings'] 

In youth, when I did love, did love, 

Methought, it was very sweet, 
To contract, Oh ! the time, for, Ah ! my behove, 

Oh, methought there was nothing meet. 




Scene 1] HAMLET 213 

Ham. Hath this fellow no feeling of his business, 
that he sings at grave-making? 

Hor. Custom hath made it in him a property of 
easiness. 70 

Ham. 'Tis e'en so : the hand of little employment 
hath the daintier sense. 

1 Clo. [Sings'] 

But age, with his stealing steps, 

Hath clawed me in his clutch, 
And hath shipped me intil the land, 

As if I had never been such. 

[Throws up a skull 

Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing 
once : how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it 
were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder ! It 
might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now 80 
o'er-reaches ; one that would circumvent God, might 
it not ? 

Hor. It might, my lord. 

Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say, Good-mor- 
row, sweet lord I How dost thou, good lord ? This might 
be my lord Such-a-one, that praised my lord Such-a- 
one's horse, when he meant to beg it, might it not ? 

Hor. Ay, my lord. 



214 HAMLET [Act V 

Ham. Why, e'en so ; and now my Lady Worm's ; 
90 chapless, and knocked about the mazard with a sex- 
ton's spade; here's fine revolution, an we had the trick 
to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, 
but to play at loggats with 'em ? mine ache to think 
on't. 

1 Clo. [Sings] 

A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, 
For and a shrouding sheet : 

Oh, a pit of clay for to be made 
For such a guest is meet. 

[Throws up another skull 

Ham. There's another; why may not that be the 
100 skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quil- 
lets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does 
he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the 
sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his 
action of battery ? Hum ! This fellow might be in's 
time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, Ids recog- 
nizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries ; 
is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his 
recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt ? will 
his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and 
110 double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair 



Scene 1] HAMLET 215 

of indentures ? The very conveyances of his lands 
will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor 
himself have no more, ha? 

Hor. Not a jot more, my lord. 

Ham. Is not parchment made of sheepskins ? 

Hor. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too. 

Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out 
assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. — 
Whose grave's this, sirrah ? 

1 Clo. Mine, sir. — 120, 

[Sings'] Oh, a pit of clay for to be made 
For such a guest is meet. 

Ham. I think it be thine, indeed, for thou liest in't. 

1 Clo. You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not 
yours ; for my part, I do not lie in't, and yet it is 
mine. 

Ham. Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is 
thine ; 'tis for the dead, not for the quick ; theref ore 
thou liest. 

1 Clo. 'Tis a quick lie, sir ; 'twill away again, from 130 
me to you. 

Ham. What man dost thou dig it for ? 

1 Clo. For no man, sir. 

Ham. W T hat woman, then ? 



216 HAMLET [Act V 

1 Clo. For none, neither. 

Ham. Who is to be buried in't ? 

1 Clo. One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her 
soul, she's dead. 

Ham. How absolute the knave is ! we must speak 
140 by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the 
lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of 
it ; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the 
peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls 
his kibe. — How long hast thou been a grave-maker ? 

1 Clo. Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that 
day that our last king Hamlet o'ercame Fortinbras. 

Ham. How long is that since ? 

1 Clo. Cannot you tell that ? every fool can tell that ; 
it was the very day that young Hamlet was born ; he 
150 that is mad, and sent into England. 

Ham. Ay, marry ; why was he sent into England ? 

I Clo. Why, because a' was mad ; a' shall recover 
his wits there; or, if a' do not, it's no great matter 
there. 

II a m. Why? 

1 Clo. 'Twill not be seen in him there; there the 
men are as mad as he. 

1 In m. How came he mad ? 

1 Clo. Very strangely, they say. 



Scene 1] HAMLET 217 

Ham. How ' strangely ' ? 160 

1 Clo. 'Faith, e'en with losing his wits. 

Ham. Upon what ground ? 

1 Clo. Why, here in Denmark. I have been 
sexton here, man and boy, thirty years. 

Ham. How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he 
rot? 

1 Clo. I'faith, if a' be not rotten before a' die a' 
will last you some eight year or nine year : a tanner 
will last you nine year. 

Ham. Why he more than another? 170 

1 Clo. Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade 
that a' will keep out water a great while ; and your 
water is a sore decayer of your dead body. Here's 
a skull now ; this skull has lain in the earth three-and- 
twenty years. 

Ham. Whose was it? 

1 Clo. A mad fellow's it was ; whose do you think 
it was ? 

Ham. ^ay, 1 know not. 

1 Clo. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue ! 'a 180 
poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This 
same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester. 

Ham. This? 

1 Clo. E'en that. 



218 HAMLET [Act V 

Ham. Let me see — [Takes the skull] Alas, poor 
Yorick ! — I knew him, Horatio ; a fellow of infinite 
jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on 
his back a thousand times; and now how abhorred 
in my imagination it is ! my gorge rises at it. Here 
190 hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how 
oft. — Where be your gibes now ? your gambols ? 
your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were 
wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to 
mock your own grinning? quite chapf alien ? Now 
get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her 
paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come ; 
make her laugh at that. — Pr'ythee, Horatio, tell me 
one thing. 

Hor. What's that, my lord ? 
200 Ham. Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this 
fashion i' the earth ? 

Hor. E'en so. 

Ham. And smelt so ? puh ! 

[Puts down the skull 

Hor. E'en so, my lord. 

Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio ! 
Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of 
Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole ? 

Hor. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. 




Ham. " Alas poor Yorick! : 



Scene 1] HAMLET 219 

Ham. No, faith, not a jot ; but to follow him 
thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead 210 
it ; as thus : Alexander died, Alexander was buried, 
Alexander returneth into dust ; the dust is earth ; of 
earth we make loam ; and why of that loam, whereto 
he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel ? 

Imperial Ccesar, dead and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away ; 
Oh, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, 
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw I 

But soft ! but soft ! aside ! — here comes the king, 

Enter Priests, Sfc, in procession: the corpse of Ophe- 
lia, Laertes and Mourners following; King, 
Queen, their Trains, fyc. 

The queen, the courtiers : who is that they follow ? 220 
And with such maimed rites ? This doth betoken 
The corse they follow did with desperate hand 
Fordo its own life ; 'twas of some estate. 
Couch we a while, and mark. 

[Retiring with Horatio 

Laer. What ceremony else ? 

Ham. That is Laertes, 

A very noble youth : mark. 



220 HAMLET [Act V 

Laer. What ceremony else ? 

1 Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd 
As we have warrantise; her death was doubtful; 
230 And, but that great command o'ersways the order, 
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged 
Till the last trumpet ; for charitable prayers, 
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her ; 
Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, 
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 
Of bell and burial. 

Laer. Must there no more be done ? 

1 Priest. Xo more be done ! 

We should profane the service of the dead 
To sing a requiem and such rest to her 
As to peace-parted souls. 
240 Laer. Lay her i' the earth; - 

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring ! — I tell thee, churlish priest, 
A ministering angel shall my sister be, 
When thou liest howling. 

I lam. What, the fair Ophelia! 

Queen. Sweets to the sweet ; farewell ! 

[Scattering /lowers 
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife; 
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, 



I 



Scene 1] HAMLET 221 

And not t' have strewed thy grave. 

Laer. Oh, treble woe 

Fall ten times treble on that cursed head 
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense 250 

Deprived thee of ! — Hold off: the earth a while, 
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms. 

[Leaps into the grave 
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, 
Till of this flat a mountain you have made, 
To o'er-top old Pelion, or the skyish head 
Of blue Olympus. 

Ham. [Advancing'] What is he whose grief 

Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow 
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand 
Like wonder-wounded hearers ? this is I, 
Hamlet the Dane ! [Leaps into the grave 

Laer. The devil take thy soul ! 260 

[Grappling with him 

Ham. Thou pray'st not well. 
I pr'ythee, take thy fingers from my throat ; 
For, though I am not splenitive and rash, 
Yet have I something in me dangerous, 
Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand I 

King. Pluck them asunder. 

Queen. Hamlet, Hamlet ! 



222 HAMLET [Act V 

A 11. Gentlemen, — 

Hor. Good my lord, be quiet. 

[The Attendants part them, and they come out of 
the grave 

Ham. Why. I will fight with him upon this theme 
Until my eyelids will no longer wag. 
270 Queen. O my son, what theme? 

Ham. I loved Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers 
Could not, with all their quantity of love, 
Make up my sum. — What wilt thou do for her? 

King. Oh, he is mad, Laertes. 

Queen. For love of God, forbear him. 

Ham. Come, show me what thou'lt do ; 
Woo't weep ? woo't fight ? woo't fast ? woo't tear 

thyself ? 
Woo't drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ? 
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine ? 
280 To outface me with leaping in her grave ? 
Be buried quick with her, and so will I : 
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw 
Millions of acres on us, till our ground, 
Singeing his pate against the burning zone, 
Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay, and thou'lt mouth, 
I'll rant as well as thou. 

Queen. This is mere madness ; 



Scene 2] HAMLET 223 

And thus awhile the fit will work on him ; 
Anon, as patient as the female dove, 
When that her golden couplets are disclosed, 
His silence will sit drooping. 

Ham. Hear you, sir, 290 

What is the reason that you use me thus ? 
I loved you ever. — But it is no matter ; 
Let Hercules himself do what he may, 
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. [Exit 

King. I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him. — 

[Exit Horatio 
[To Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our last 

night's speech ; 
We'll put the matter to the present push. — 
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son. — 
This grave shall have a living monument : 
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see ; 300 

Till then, in patience oar proceeding be. [Exeunt 

Scene II 
A Hall in the Castle 
Enter Hamlet and Horatio 
Ham. So much for this, sir; now let me see the 
other ; 
You do remember all the circumstance ? 



224: HAMLET [Act V 

Hor. Remember it, my lord ? 

Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of righting, 
That wonld not let me sleep ; methought I lay 
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, — 
And praised be rashness for it, — let ns know, 
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well 
When our deep plots do pall; and that should 
teach us 
10 There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will. 

Hor. That is most certain. 

Ham. Up from my cabin, 
My sea-gown scarfed about me, in the dark 
Groped I to find out them ; had my desire, 
Fingered their packet, and, in fine, withdrew 
To mine own room again ; making so bold, 
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal 
Their grand commission ; where I found, Horatio, — 
O royal knavery ! — an exact command, 
20 Larded with many several sorts of reasons, 
Importing Denmark's health, and England's too, 
With, ho ! such bugs and goblins in my life, 
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated, 
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, 
My head should be struck off. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 225 

Hor. Is't possible ? 

Ham. Here's the commission; read it at more 
leisure. 
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed ? 

Hor. I beseech you. 

Ham. Being thus be-netted round with villanies, — 
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, 30 

They had begun the play, — I sat me down ; 
Devised a new commission ; wrote it fair ; — 
I once did hold it, as our statists do, 
A baseness to write fair, and labored much 
How to forget that learning ; but, sir, now 
It did me yeoman's service : — wilt thou know 
The effect of what I wrote ? 

Hor. Ay, good my lord. 

Ham. An earnest conjuration from the king, 
As England was his faithful tributary, 
As love between them like the palm shonld nourish, 40 
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear, 
And stand a comma 'tween their amities, 
And many such like as' 's of great charge, 
That on the view and knowing of these contents, 
Without debatement further, more or less, 
He should the bearers put to sudden death, 
Not shriving-time allowed. 



226 HAMLET [Act V 

Hor. How was this sealed ? 

Ham. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. 
I had my father's signet in my purse, 
50 Which was the model of that Danish seal ; 
Folded the writ up in form of the other ; 
Subscribed it ; gave't the impression ; placed it safely, 
The changeling never known. Now, the next day 
Was our sea-fight ; and what to this was sequent 
Thou know'st already. 

Hor. So Guildensteru and Rosencrantz go to't. 

Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this 
employment ; 
They are not. near my conscience; their defeat 
Does by their own insinuation grow. 
60 Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes 
Between the pass and fell-incensed points 
Of mighty opposites. 

Hor. Why, what a king is this ! 

Ham. Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon — 
lie that hath killed my king, and stained my mother; 
Popped in between the election and my hopes ; 
Thrown out his angle for my proper life, 
And with such cozenage — is't not perfect conscience 
To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damned, 
To let this canker of our nature come 



Scene 2] HAMLET 227 

In further evil? 70 

Hor. It must_ be shortly known to him from Eng- 
land 

What is the issue of the business there. 

Ham. It will be short ; the interim is mine ; 

And a man's life's no more than to say One. 

But I am very sorry, good Horatio, 

That to Laertes I forgot myself ; 

For by the image of my cause, I see 

The portraiture of his ; I'll court his favors ; 

But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me 

Into a towering passion. 

Hor. Peace ! who comes here ? 80 

Enter Osric 

Osr. Your lordship is right welcome back to Den- 
mark. 

Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. — [Aside to Hor.] 
Dost know this water-fly? 

Hor. [Aside to Ham.] No, my good lord. 

Ham. \_Aside to Hor.] Thy state is the more gracious, 
for ; tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and 
fertile ; let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall 
stand at the king's mess : 'tis a chough, but, as I say, 
spacious in the possession of dirt. 



228 HAMLET [Act V 

90 Osr. Sweet lord, if your friendship were at leisure, 
I should impart a thing to you from his majesty. 

Ham. I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of 
spirit. Put your bonnet to his right use ; 'tis for the 
head. 

Osr. I thank your lordship, 'tis very hot. 

Ham. No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is 
northerly. 

Osr. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed. 

Ham. But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for 
100 my complexion. 

Osr. Exceedingly, my lord ; it is very sultry, — as 
'twere, — I cannot tell how. — But, my lord, his ma- 
jesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great 
wager on your head : sir, this is the matter. 

Ham. I beseech you, remember 

[Hamlet moves him to put on his hat 

Osr. Nay, in good faith ; for mine ease, in good 
faith. Sir, here is newly come to court, Laertes ; be- 
lieve me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excel- 
lent differences, of very soft society and great showing ; 
110 indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or 
calendar of gentry, for you shall find in him the con- 
tinent of what part a gentleman would see. 

Ham. Sir, his defhiement suffers no perdition in 



Scene 2] HAMLET 229 

you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially 
would dizzy the arithmetic of memory ; and yet but 
yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the 
verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great 
article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness, 
as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his 
mirror, and who else would trace him, his umbrage, 120 
nothing more. 

Osr. Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him. 

Ham. The concernancy, sir ? why do we wrap the 
gentleman in our more rawer breath ? 

Osr. Sir ? 

Hor. Is't not possible to understand in another 
tongue ? You will do't, sir, really. 

Ham. What imports the nomination of this gentle- 
man? 

Osr. Of Laertes? 130 

Hor. [Aside to Ham.] His purse is empty already; 
all's golden words are spent. 

Ham. Of him, sir. 

Osr. I know you are not ignorant — 

Ham. I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you 
did, it would not much approye me. — Well, sir. 

Osr. You are not ignorant of w T hat excellence 
Laertes is — 



230 HAMLET [Act V 

Ham. I dare not confess that, lest I should compare 
140 with him in excellence ; but to know a man well, 
were to know himself. 

Osr. I mean, sir, for his weapon ; but in the impu- 
tation laid on him by them, in his meed he's unfel- 
lowed. 

Ham. What's his weapon ? 

Osr. Rapier and dagger. 

Ham. That's two of his weapons ; but, well. 

Osr. The king, sir, hath wagered with him six 
Barbary horses ; against the which he has imponed, 
150 as I take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with 
their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so ; three of the 
carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very respon- 
sive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very 
liberal conceit. 

Ham. What call you the carriages ? 

Hot. [Aside to Ham.'] I knew you must be edified 
by the m argent ere you had done. 

Osr. The carriages, sir, are the hangers. 

Ham. The phrase would be more germane to the 

100 matter if we could carry cannon by our sides ; I would 

it might be hangers till then. But, on : six Barbary 

horses against six French swords, their assigns, and 

three liberal-conceited carriages; that's the French 



Scene 2] HAMLET 231 

bet against the Danish. Why is this imponed, as you 
call it? 

Osr. The king, sir, hath laid, sir, that in a dozen 
passes between yourself and him, he shall not exceed 
you three hits ; he hath laid on twelve for nine ; and 
it would come to immediate trial, if your lordship 
would vouchsafe the answer. 170 

Ham. How if I answer No ? 

Osr. I mean, my lord, the opposition of your per- 
son in trial. 

Ham. Sir, I will walk here in the hall ; if it please 
his majesty, it is the breathing-time of day with me ; 
let the foils be brought ; the gentleman willing, and 
the king hold his purpose, I will win for him if I 
can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and 
the odd hits. 

Osr. Shall I re-deliver you e'en so ? 180 

Ham. To this effect, sir ; after what flourish your 
nature will. 

Osr. I commend my duty to your lordship. 

Ham. Yours, yours. [Exit Osric] — He does well 
to commend it himself ; there are no tongues else for's 
turn. 

Hor. This lapwing runs away with the shell on his 
head. 



232 HAMLET [Act V 

Ham. He did comply with his dug before he 

190 sucked it. Thus has he, and many more of the same 

bevy, that, I know the drossy age dotes on, only got 

the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter ; 

a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through 

and through the most fond and winnowed opinions ; 

and do but blow them to their trial the bubbles are 

out. 

Enter a Lord 

Lord. My lord, his majesty commended him to you 
by young Osric, who brings back to him that you at- 
tend him in the hall ; he sends to know if your pleas- 
200 ure hold to play with Laertes, or that you will take 
longer time. 

Ham. I am constant to my purposes ; they follow 
the king's pleasure ; if his fitness speaks, mine is 
ready ; now or whensoever, provided I be so able as 
now. 

Lord. The king and queen and all are coming 
down. 

Ham. In happy time. 

Lord. The queen desires you to use some gentle 
210 entertainment to Laertes, before you fall to play. 

Ham. She well instructs me. [Exit Lord 

Ilor. You will lose this wager, my lord. 



Scene 2] HAMLET 233 

Ham. I do not think so ; since he went into France, 
I have been in continual practice ; I shall win at the 
odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here 
about my heart ; but it is no matter. 

Hor. Nay, good my lord, — 

Ham. It is but foolery ; but it is such a kind of 
gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman. 

Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it ; I will 220 
forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit. 

Ham. Not a whit: we defy augury ; there's a special 
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis 
not to come ; if it be not to come, it will be now ; if 
it be not now, yet it will come ; the readiness is all ; 
since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't 
to leave betimes ? Let be. 

Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Lords, Osric, and 
Attendants, with foils and gauntlets ; a table and 
flagons of wine on it 

King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand 
from me. 
[The King puts the hand of Laertes into that of 
Hamlet 
Ham. Give me your pardon, sir ; I have done you 
wrong ; 



234 HAMLET [Act V 

230 But pardon't, as you are a gentleman. 

This presence knows, and you must needs have heard, 

How I am punished with a sore distraction. 

What I have done, 

That might your nature, honor, and exception, 

Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. 

Was't Hamlet wronged Laertes ? Never Hamlet ; 

If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, 

And when he's not himself, does wrong Laertes, 

Then Hamlet does it not ; Hamlet denies it. 

240 Who does it then ? His madness ; if 't be so, 
Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged ; 
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy. 
Sir, in this audience, 
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil 
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, 
That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, 
And hurt my brother. 

Laer. I am satisfied in nature, 

Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most 
To my revenge ; but in my terms of honor 

250 I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement, 
Till by some elder masters of known honor 
I have a voice and precedent of peace, 
To keep my name un gored. But till that time 



Scene 2] HAMLET 235 

I do receive your offered love like love, 
And will not wrong it. 

Ham. I embrace it freely, 

And will this brother's wager frankly play. — 

PGive us the foils. — Come on. 
Laer. Come, one for me. 

Ham. I'll be your foil, Laertes ; in mine ignorance 
Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, 
Stick fiery off indeed. 

Laer. You mock me, sir. 260 

Ham. Xo, by this hand. 

King. Give them the foils, young Osric. — Cousin 
Hamlet, 
You know the wager ? 

Ham. Yery well, my lord ; 

Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side. 

King. I do not fear it ; I have seen you both. 
But since he's bettered, we have therefore odds. 
Laer. This is too heavy ; let me see another. 
Ham. This likes me well. — These foils have all a 

length ? 
Osr. Ay, my good lord. 

[They prepare to play 
King. Set me the stoups of wine upon that table. — 270 
If Hamlet give the first or second hit, 



236 HAMLET [Act V 

Or quit in answer of the third exchange, 
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire ; 
The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath ; 
And in the cup an union shall he throw, 
Richer than that which four successive kings 
In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups; 
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, 
The trumpet to the cannoneer without, 
280 The caunons to the heavens, the heavens to earth, 
Now the king drinks to Hamlet ! — Come, begin ; — 
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye. 

Ham. Come on, sir. 

Laer. Come, my lord. {They play 

Ham. One. 

Laer. No. 

Ham. Judgment. 

Osr. A hit, a very palpable hit. 

Laer. Well ; — again. 

King. Stay ; give me drink. — Hamlet, this pearl is 
thine ; 
Here's to thy health. — 

{Trumpets sound : and cannon shot off within 
Give him the cup. 

Ham. I'll play this bout first ; set it by awhile — 
Come. [They play~] Another hit; what say you? 



Scene 2] HAMLET 237 

Laer. A touch, a touch, I do confess. 

King. Our son shall win. 

Queen. He's fat, and scant of breath. — 290 

Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows ; 
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet. 

Ham. Good madam ! 

King. Gertrude, do not drink ! 

Queen. I will, my lord ; I pray you, pardon me. 

King. [Aside] It is the poisoned cup ! it is too late ! 

Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam ; by-and-by. 

Queen. Come, let me wipe thy face. 

Laer. My lord, I'll hit him now. 

King. I do not think it. 

Laer. [Aside'] And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my con- 
science. 

Ham. Come, for the third, Laertes ; you but dally ; 300 
I pray you, pass with your best violence ; 
I am af eard you make a wanton of me. 

Laer. Say you so ? come on. [They play 

Osr. Nothing, neither way. 

Laer. Have at you now. 

[Laer. wounds Ham. ; then, in scuffling, they 
change rapiers, and Ham. wounds Laer. 

King. Part them ! they are incensed. 

Ham. Nay, come, again. [The Queen falls 



238 HAMLET [Act V 

Osr. Look to the queen there, ho ! 

Hor. They bleed on both sides. — How is it, my 
lord? 

Osr. How is't, Laertes ? 

Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, 
Osric ; 
310 I am justly killed with mine own treachery. 

Ham. How does the queen ? 

King. She swoons to see them bleed. 

Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink, — O my dear 
Hamlet, — 
The drink, the drink ! — I am poisoned ! {Dies 

Ham. O villany ! — Ho ! Let the door be locked : 
Treachery ! seek it out. [Laertes falls 

Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain ; 
No medicine in the world can do thee good, 
In thee there is not half an hour of life ; 
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand. 
320 Un bated, and envenomed ; the foul practice 
Hath turned itself on me ; lo, here I lie, 
Never to rise again ; thy mother's poisoned; 
I can no more ; — the king, — the king's to blame. 

Ham. The point envenomed too ! — 
Then, venom, to thy work ! {Stabs the King 

All. Treason! treason! 



Scene 2] HAMLET 239 

King. Oh, yet defend me, friends ; I am but hurt. 

Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned 
Dane, 
Drink off: this potion ! — Is thy union here ? 
Follow my mother. [King dies 

Laer. He is justly served ; 330 

It is a poison tempered by himself. — 
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet ; 
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, 
Nor thine on me ! [Dies 

Ham. Heaven make thee free of it ! I follow thee. — 
I am dead, Horatio. — Wretched queen, adieu ! — 
You that look pale and tremble at this chance, 
That are but mutes or audience to this act, 
Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, death, 
Is strict in his arrest) oh, I could tell you — 340 

But let it be. — Horatio, I am dead ; 
Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright 
To the unsatisfied. 

Hor. Never believe it ; 

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane ; 
Here's yet some liquor left. 

Ham. As thou'rt a man> 

Give me the cup ; let go ; by heaven I'll have it. 
O good Horatio, what a wounded name, 



240 HAMLET [Act V 

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me ! 
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
350 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 
To tell my story. — [March afar off, and shot within 
What warlike noise is this ? 
Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from 
Poland, 
To the ambassadors of England gives 
This warlike volley. 

Ham. Oh, I die, Horatio ; 

The potent poison quite o'er-crow T s my spirit ; 
I cannot live to hear the news from England ; 
But I do prophesy the election lights 
On Fortinbras ; he has my dying voice ; 
3G0 So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, 

Which have solicited — The rest is silence. [Dies 

Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. — Good night, 
sweet prince, 
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest ! — 
Why does the drum come hither ? [March within 

Enter Fortinbras, the English Ambassadors, with 
drum, colors, and Attendants 

Fort. Where is this sight ? 



Scene 2] HAMLET 241 

Hor. What is it ye would see ? 

If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search. 

Fort. This quarry cries on havoc. — O proud 
death ! 
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, 
That thou so many princes at a shot 
So bloodily hast struck ? 

1 Arab. The sight is dismal; 370 

And our affairs from England come too late ; 
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, 
To tell him his commandment is fulfilled, 
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. 
Where should we have our thanks ? 

Hor. Not from his mouth, 

Had it the ability of life to thank you ; 
He never gave commandment for their death. 
But since, so jump upon this bloody question, 
You from the Polack wars, and you from England, 
Are here arrived, give order that these bodies 380 

High on a stage be placed to the view ; 
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world 
How these things came about : so shall you hear 
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, 
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, 
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, 



242 HAMLET [Act V, Sc. 2 

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook 

Fallen on the inventors' heads. All this can I 

Truly deliver. 

Fort. Let us haste to hear it, 

390 And call the noblest to the audience. 

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune ; 
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, 
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. 

Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak, 
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more ; 
But let this same be presently performed, 
E'en while men's minds are wild ; lest more mischance, 
On plots and errors, happen. 

Fort. Let four captains 

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage ; 
400 For he was likely, had he been put on, 

To have proved most royally : and, for his passage, 
The soldiers' music, and the rites of war 
Speak loudly for him. — 
Take up the bodies. — Such a sight as this 
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. — 
Go, bid the soldiers shoot. \_A dead march 

[Exeunt, bearing off the bodies ; after which d peal 
of ordnance is shot off 



NOTES 



Abbeeviations. — 0. E. = 01d English; H. Ger. = High German 
(the German usually taught in our schools is N. H. G. = New High 
German); L. Ger. = Low German ( = English); N. Fr.= Norman- 
French ; Gr. = Greek ; Lat. = Latin ; Dim. = diminutive ; Cogs. = cog- 
nates ; Of. ( = confer), compare; CI. P. S. = Clarendon Press Series; 
and Co. S. =Collins's Series. In the naming of plays short titles have 
been used. Thus the Taming of the Shrew is mentioned as The 
Shrew; AWs Well that Ends Well as AWs Well ; Troilus and Cres- 
sida as Troilus. For Shakespeare, we have always printed S. 



ACT FIRST 

Scene 1 



Elsinore, or Helsingor, is on the east coast of Zealand, 
about twenty-four miles from Copenhagen. On a point near 
it stands the castle of Kronborg, built in 1577, which com- 
mands the entrance to the Baltic. The first scene is in this 
castle. 

1 The compression of the scene is wonderful, and there is, 
perhaps, no passage in any drama which exhibits equal 
variety in the same space. The fright of Bernardo, his sup- 
pressed emotion, his dislike to be by himself, the uncon- 
sciousness of Francisco, the levity of Horatio, the abstraction 
and highly wrought feelings of Marcellus, the intense excite- 
ment in the greeting with Bernardo, are all brought out clear 
and well defined in about twenty lines. Condensed and rapid 
as is the dialogue, it is complete.' — Quarterly Revieiv, Vol. 
lxxix. 1847, p. 318, 

243 



244 NOTES [Act I 

4. Upon your hour. As Francisco speaks, the castle 
clock strikes twelve. Coleridge says, ' Note the natural and 
easy tone of the dialogue, which contains no labored descrip- 
tion of the night or of the scenery. We seem to be acci- 
dentally overhearing a conversation.' 

6. Much = great. For the use of much with the plural, 
cf. Luke xii. 19: 'Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for 

many years.' Bitter for bitterly. Dr. Abbott (sect. 1) 

says, ' In Early English many adverbs were formed from 
adjectives by adding e (dative) to the positive degree ; as 
bright, adj.; brighte, adv. In time the e was dropped, but 
the adverbial use was kept. Hence, from a false analogy, 
many adjectives (such as excellent), which could never form 
adverbs in e , were used as adverbs. We still say colloquially, 
Come quick; the moon shines bright. 

8. Not a mouse stirring". Coleridge says, ' The atten- 
tion to minute sounds — naturally associated with the recol- 
lection of minute objects, and the more familiar and trifling, 
the more impressive from the unusualness of their producing 
any impression at all — gives a philosophic pertinency to this 
last image ; but it has likewise its dramatic use and purpose.' 

11. Rivals, partners. The quarto of 1603 has the reading 
partners. Rivals were those who lived on the same stream 
(rir as), to which they had a common right for purposes of 
irrigation, etc. ; hence frequent disputes between those who 
lived up or down stream. 

16. Give you = God give you. 

17. A piece of him. Cf. the ordinary phrase : Something 
like him. 

19. What. The O. E. interjection, generally used to call 
a person ; sometimes also used as an exclamation of impa- 
tience. This thing . . . again. Coleridge points out 

thai 'even the word again has its credibilizing effect,' and 
how Horatio rises from t lie phrase this thing to this dreaded 
sight, and then to this apparition. 



Scene 1] NOTES 245 

21. Fantasy, imagination. From Gr. phaniasia, the 
power of making things appear (from phaino, I make to 
appear; cogs, are phenomenon and phantasy , which last has 
been contracted into fancy). 

27. Approve, confirm, prove. Cf. Merchant, III. ii. 79, 
where Bassanio talks of ' approving an error with a text.' 

29. Assail and fortified are terms such as a soldier would 
use. 

31. What, with an account of what. 

34. Pole = pole-star. 

35. Made his course. S. has also the phrases : To hold 

a course ; to run a course; to take a course. Illume. 

The only instance of the word in S. 

37. The bell = the clock. (In H. Ger. Glocke still means 
bell.) Beating* = striking. 

38. Break thee for thou. Dr. Abbott (sect. 212) says, 
1 " Look thee," ''hark thee,"' are to be explained by eu- 
phonic reasons (and not as reflexive). Thee, thus used, 
follows imperatives which, being in themselves emphatic, 
require an unemphatic pronoun. The Elizabethans reduced 
thou to thee. 

40. Scholar, able to read Latin — the language employed 
in exorcising a spirit. 

42. Most like. Coleridge says, ' Note the judgment dis- 
played in having the two persons present, who, as having 
seen the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming 
their former opinions ; whilst the sceptic is silent, and after 
having been twice addressed by his friends, answers with 
two hasty syllables, Most like, and a confession of horror. 
Words are wasted on those who feel, and to those who 
do not feel the exquisite judgment of S. in this scene what 
can be said ? ' 

43. Spoke to. In allusion to the belief that a ghost will 
not speak until it has first been spoken to. 

44. Usurp 'st . . . together with. A daring zeugma. 



246 XOTES [Act I 

The Ghost usurps (= invades) the quiet night and also the 
fair form of the buried king. 

47. Sometimes = sometime, that is, at one time. 

53. On't = of it. Might not, in the old sense of could 

not. The same sense is still found in the noun might, from 
may, the old form of which was magan. 

55. Avouch, the only instance of this verb used as a 
noun by S. 

59. Norway = the king of Norway. 

60. Parle, parley. The usual meaning in S. is that of 
a conference with enemies regarding peace or a truce. 

61. Sledded Polacks, Poles on sledges. Webster (quoted 
by Mr. Rolfe) has the phrase, ' Like a shav'd Polack.' The 
word does not occur anywhere else in S. (except in V. ii. 
352) ; nor does sledded. 

03. Jump = exactly. This use of the adverb corre- 
sponds with G.'s use of the verb, and is most easily explained 
by it. 

66. In the gross, in the general, as opposed to the par- 
ticular, view of affairs. Scope, general view. 

67. Bodes, foretells. 

70. Toils, used as a trans, verb. 

71. Cast = casting. 

72. Mart, marketing or buying. (Mart is a compressed 
form of market.) 

73. Impress — impressment. 

75. Toward, in preparation, at hand, coming on. 

81. Pricked on, spurred on. Emulate = emulous. 

The only instance <>f the word in S. 

82. The combat. The is employed par excellence. The 
COtnbat the (mortal) combat which puts an end to discussion. 

85. Law and heraldry = heraldic law. A hendiadys. 

86. With his life, in the event of his being killed. 

Those his lands, in legal language. 

87. Seized of = possessed of — another legal term. 



Scene 1] NOTES 247 

88. Moiety, from Late Lat. medietas, half; but fre- 
quently used by S. in the sense of a portion. 

89. Gaged, pledged or deposited as an equivalent to the 
lands of Fortinbras. Gage is a doublet of ivage; and the 
French have gages for toages. 

92. Carriage of the article designed, tenor of the 
clause drawn up. For a very different meaning of car- 
riage, see V. ii. 154. 

94:. Unimproved, undiciplined, untutored. Chapman 
uses improve for reprove. 

95. Skirts, borders. 

96. Sharked up, picked up wherever he could find them. 
List, muster-roll. Resolutes, desperadoes. 

98. That hath a stomach in't, that requires courage. 

105. Homage, bustle, confusion. A form of rummage, 
originally a sea word, meaning ' to set a ship to rights/ or 
1 to clear the hold of goods.' 

106. Be. Dr. Abbott (sect. 299) says, ' Be expresses more 
doubt than is after a verb of thinking.' 

107. Sort, suit or assort itself with the events going on all 
round us. Portentous, ominous or full of portents. 

109. Question, the subject and cause. 

110. A mote, a small matter as compared with the sig- 
nificance of the things it portends. 

111. Palmy, victorious. The palm was the badge of vic- 
tory. 

114. Gibber, speak inarticulately. 

115. As stars. It is pretty plain that a line must have 
dropped out. The speaker must have said something like 

this: And other terrible things were heard and seen. 

Stars with trains of fire, comets. 

116. Disasters. From Gr. dys, ill, and astron, a star. 
One of the terms that have come down to us from Astrology. 

Others are influence, aspect, retrograde, ascendant, etc. 

Moist star, the moon. 



248 NOTES [Act I 

118. Sick ... to doomsday, as sick and ill as if the 
last day had come. A bold and subtle use of the preposition 
to. 

119. Precurse, precursor, forerunner. 

120. Harbingers. A harbinger was an officer of a royal 
household sent on in front to prepare harborage or lodging 
for the king. 

123. Climature, country or region. The word comes 
from the Gr. klima, a slope — as the temperature depends 
on the slope of the sun's rays and the angle they make 
with the ground. 

125. Cross it. It was an old belief that any one who 
crossed the path of a ghost was 'blasted' by it, — that is, 
made subject to its evil influences. 

127. Speak to me. The importance of this adjuration 
demands a line for itself. The pause, which the emotion 
necessitates and the physical need of taking breath com- 
pels, fills up the full measure of the line, and represents 
the missing part. 

132. Happily. Some commentators translate this as 

haply. Others think it = luckily. Foreknowing = 

foreknowledge. 

134. Uphoarded, hoarded up. 

138. Partisan, battle-ax (on long pole) or halbert. 
From Fr. pertulsane, said to be from O. Fr. pertuiser, to 
bore through ; N. Fr. percer, to pierce. 

147. Fearful summons. Summons is from Fr. semonce ; 
from Lat. submoneas — the first word of the law Lat. in 
which the paper is written. 

148. The trumpet = the trumpeter. 

149. Lofty, an adverb to sounding, just like thrill. 

152. Extravagant, in the literal sense of the Latin 
words extra vagans, wandering beyond boundaries; wander- 
ing beyond (extra) the night boundaries. 

L53. Confine, place of confinement. 



Scene 2] NOTES 249 

154. Probation (four syllables), proof. 

156. 'Gainst. Very often used of time in older English. 

160. Strike, have a malignant influence. We still have 
the epithet moonstruck. 

161. Takes, infects or blasts. 

162. Gracious, full of grace, goodness, and favor. 

171. Loves. S. and other writers of his time frequently 
use an abstract noun in the plural number, when the noun 
relates to several persons. 

Scene 2 

1. Coleridge says, ' In the king's speech, observe the 
set and pedantically antithetic form of the sentences when 
touching that which galled the heels of conscience — the 
strain of undignified rhetoric — and yet in what follows 
concerning the public weal a certain appropriate majesty.' 

2. That. S. and other writers of his time have though 
that, while that, lest that, when that, etc. ; and when it was 
necessary to repeat the conjunction, they used the that 
merely as a representative. Here, accordingly, that stands 
for though. 

4. Brow of woe = woeful brow. A very common use of 
of in S. 

9. Jointress, joint possessor. The only instance of the 
word in S. 

10. Defeated = disfeatured, disfigured. 

11. Auspicious, cheerful. Dropping tears. 

13. In equal scale. Here the formality and antithesis 

verge closely on the ridiculous. Dole, grief. There are 

two words with this spelling in English. Bole, a share, 
from deal, is a purely English word. Dole {doleful, con- 
dole, etc.) is from the O. Fr. doel, Fr. deuil, from Lat. 
dolor, grief. 

14. To wife. The Old English idiom. Barred, ex- 
cluded. 



250 XOTES [Act I 

18. Supposal, opinion. The only instance of the word 
in S. 

21. Colleagned, allied. The only instance of the 
word. 

22. He, a superfluous pronoun; but the distance of the 

proper nominative makes its use legitimate. Pester, 

trouble, bother. 

23. Importing-, purporting, having for import. 

24. With = in accordance with. Bonds. Bonds and 

bands are two forms of the same word, meaning obliga- 
tion. 

29. Bed-rid, "A. S. bed, a bed, and ridda, a knight, a 
rider." Earle suggests that it is the participle of bedrian, 
to bewitch. 

31. Gait, going on with, or procedure in it. Gait is said 
to be a doublet or by-form of gate. The original meaning 
seems to be an opening. (The H. Ger. form is Gasse.) The 
word really comes from get, not from go. In that = inas- 
much as. 

33. Subject, here a collective noun, as in I. i. 70. 

35. For bearers = as bearers. 

39. Commend your duty, be the test which will prove 
that you have done your duty. 

41. Nothing", used adverbially, = not at all. 

43. Suit, request, petition. 

45. Lose your voice = ask in vain. Thou beg*. 

Note the transition from you to thou. It marks the increase 
in the professions of the king towards Laertes. 

47. Native to, closely related to. 

48. Instrumental to, fully subservient to. S. often ap- 
plies the word instruments to persons. Claudius was prob- 
ably under great obligations to Polonius — perhaps for secur- 
ing his election to the throne instead of Hamlet. 

50. Dread my lord. An inversion common with S. 
We should say " my dread lord." 



Scene 2] NOTES 251 

56. Pardon, permission to return. 

' I begg'd 
His pardon for return ' 

(= leave to go back) . 

58. Slow leave = slowly given leave. The freedom with 
which S. plays with adjectives is seen in many phrases. 
Dr. Schmidt says, ' As the English adjective has no inflec- 
tion, it was formerly apt to form a looser connection with 
its substantive than in other languages ; and instead of ex- 
pressing a quality or degree pertaining to the latter, to be 
employed to limit the extent and sphere of it. Thus a 
bloody fire in Merry Wives, V. v., is not a fire that has the 
quality of being bloody, but, as it were, a blood-lire, a fire in 
the blood.' 

60. Upon his will = induced by his desire. S. frequently 

uses upon in this way. Hard consent. See note on 

line 58. 

64. Cousin = relative. (The word is a concentrated form 
of the Lat. consobrinus = consororinus, a mother's sister's 
son.) S. uses it in the sense of nepheio ; of niece ; of uncle ; 
of brother-in-law ; and of grandchild. 

65. Kin . . . kind. The latter word must have been pro- 
nounced kinned ; otherwise the antithesis would have been 
lost. More than an ordinary kinsman — for he is both step- 
son and nephew; but not feeling at all friendly. "More 
than kin to Hamlet in being uncle and father — twice kin — 
but less than kind, because his incestuous marriage is unnat- 
ural, out of nature, or kind." 

67. F the sun. Another punning reference to his dislike 
of the too frequent use of the word son by his uncle. Some 
commentators think they see in this a reference to an old 
English proverb : ' Out of God's blessing into the warm 
sunne,' which meant, ' Thrust out of house and home into 
the open air, which is the common property of all men.' 

73. Nature, the state of being born, or human life. 



252 NOTES [Acr I 

74. Ay, madam. Coleridge remarks, 'Here observe 
Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression 
prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which 
his character is more developed, by bringing forward his 
aversion to externals, and which betrays his habit of brood- 
ing over the world within him, coupled with a prodigality of 
beautiful words, which are the half-embodyings of thought, 
and are more than thought. Note also Hamlet's silence to 
the long speech of the king which follows, and his respectful, 
but general, answer to his mother.' 

79. Suspiration, sighing. The only instance of the word 
in S. But he has suspire twice. 

81. Havior the same as behavior. The word occurs seven 
times in S. 

83. Denote . . . truly, give a true and complete indica- 
tion of what I feel. 

90. Bound = was bound. 

92. Obsequious, in the old and literal sense of belonging 
to obsequies, funereal. 

93. Condolement, grief. Observe that the king, being 
in an artificial and self-conscious state of mind all through 
the play, employs Latin words, a pompous diction, and 
elaborate phrases. Feeling that he was the cause of all 
this sorrow, it was simply impossible that he should be able 
to use the simple and natural words that would be fit for 
the occasion. 

95. Incorrect (a participle, not a mere adjective), in the 
literal Latin sense of uncorrected or unsubdued. 

97. Simple, foolish, witless. 

99. Any the most. S. has also the phrases: One the 

truest mannered ; one the wisest prince. Vulgar, in its 

original Latin sense of common. So the Bible was trans- 
lated into the ' vulgar tongue.' 

101. Fault, offense. — — To = against. 

105. Till he = down to him. 



Scene 2] NOTES 253 

107. Unprevailing' = unavailing. In two passages, S. 
uses prevail in the sense of avail. 

112. Impart. Probably S. meant the object of this verb 

to be love. He forgot his previous construction. For = 

as for. 

113. School = university. The University of Witten- 
berg was founded in 1502. Of course this is a necessary 
anachronism. ' At that great outburst of devotion to letters 
and philosophy which accompanied the Reformation, and 
both created and fostered into almost instant maturity the 
universities of Northern Europe, it was not only youths who 
thronged to drink and bathe in the streams of knowledge, 
but also men of mature age.' — Strachey. 

114. Retrograde to our desire. Another piece of affec- 
tation for contrary to our wish. 

115. Bend you (a reflective verb) = be inclined. 

121. Sits smiling" to my heart = sits close to my heart 

smiling. In grace whereof = and to grace or honor 

this (consent). 

127. Rouse, full bumper. (The word is said to come 
from Danish, ros, a beaker.) In S.'s time the Danes were 

known as the most intemperate people in Europe. 

Bruit, report. 

132. Canon, religious law. Self-slaughter, the pure 

English phrase for suicide. 

134. Uses, customs. 

137. Merely, in one of the Latin senses of mere, — en- 
tirely. 

140. Hyperion, the god of the sun, a name in Homer 
for Apollo, the god of poetry, music, medicine, archery, and 
arts. Warbnrton says, ' By the Satyr is meant Pan ; as by 
Hyperion, Apollo.' 

141. Mig'ht not, could not. Beteem, permit. The 

only other place in S. where the word occurs is in Mid- 
summer, I. i. 



254 NOTES [Act I 

142. Visit. Note the omission of the to. 
147. Or ere. Or is a doublet or by-form of ere. Or ere 
is therefore a tautological phrase, like an if. 

149, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, king of Lydia. She 
was proud of her twelve children, and insulted Latona, the 
mother of Apollo and Diana. Wherefore Apollo slew all 
her sons; and Diana all her daughters — save Chloris; and 
Niobe, smitten dumb with sorrow, was changed into a rock, 
from which tears flow forever. 

150. Discourse of reason, the power of looking this 
way and that way, and at length choosing. (From Lat. 
dis, apart, and curro, I run.) 

155. Left the flushing* = ceased to produce redness. 

158. Nor it cannot. In older English negatives sup- 
ported aud intensified each other. The annihilation of each 
other, as in Milton's Nor did they not perceive him, is a, 
Latin usage, and has been imported into our language. 

163. Change = exchange the name of friend. 

163. Make you = are you doing ? An old English phrase, 
like the German Was machen Sie? 

180. Thrift, thrift. * What a blast of sarcasm,' says 
Coleridge, ' whistles through the consonants of this word.' 

Baked meats. It was customary to have a great feast 

at a funeral. 

182. Dearest foe. The word dear, in S., has a wide 
range of meaning. Besides all its modern meanings, it is 
frequently used to designate that which touches the heart 
most closely, whether with pain or with pleasure, with love 
or with hatred. 

I'.).;. Season, control or moderate. Admiration, won- 
der. 

194. Attent, attentive. Only twice found in S. May 

= can. Deliver = relate. 

199. Dead. S. has also, The dead of darkness ; the dead 
of night; the dreadful dead of dark midnight. Vast, 



Scene 3] NOTES 255 

used as a noun. Vast and vmste are two forms of the same 
word (from Lat. vastus). 

201. Cap-a-pe = cap-a-pied, from head to foot. 

205. Distilled, melted. 

"206. With = by. This was the old use of with. The 
modern meaning was represented by mid (the Germans 
still have unit). Act = action, operation. 

217. Its head. The word its (the old neuter of he was 
hit; poss. his) was hardly naturalized in S.'s time. No 
instance is found in our version of the Bible, except in 
Leviticus xxv. 5 : ' That which groweth of its own ac- 
cord ' (which was printed in the version of 1611, 'it own 
accord ') ; in all other places we find the correct form his. 
In the folio editions of S. the poss. it is found fourteen 
times ; it's, nine times ; and its, only once. 

218. As = as if. 

230. Beaver, from O. Fr. bevere (from Lat. bibere), to 
drink. The movable front or visor of the helmet, which 
the wearer raises for the purpose of drinking. 

235. Like = likely. S. has like enough ; and most like. 

237. Tell, count. This is the oldest meaning of the word. 
(Cf. count and recount.) Hence the words toll, teller, 
tale, etc. 

212. Warrant, a monosyllable. 

244. Gape, roar at me. 

247. Tenable, retained. 

253. Your loves = Say rather your love 

255. Doubt, suspect or fear. 

Scene 3 

1 This scene must be regarded as one of Shakespeare's lyric 
movements in the play, and the skill with which it is inter- 
woven with the dramatic parts is peculiarly an excellence 
with our poet. You experience the sensation of a pause 
without the sense of a stop.' — Coleridge. 



256 NOTES [Act I 

3. Convoy, conveyance. Is assistant, is at hand, or 

ready. S. uses the verb assist in the sense of attend or 
be present at — like Fr. assister. 

6. Toy, a mere fancy, not a deep-rooted passion. In 

blood = in a high state of health and good spirits. In 
blood is a term of the chase. 

7. Primy nature, nature in its first spring. The only 
instance of the word ; but S. twice uses prime for spring. 

9. Suppliance (with the accent on the second syllable) , 
that which supplies or fills up for the time being. 

11. Crescent, in the literal sense of the Latin word 
crescens, growing. We still have the phrase, crescent moon. 

12. Thews, muscles and sinews. This temple, the 

body (see John ii. 21). The use of the word temple sug- 
gests the employment of the term service. 

15. Cautel, deceit, falseness. Only twice used by S. 
But he has cautelous in Julius Caesar, II. i. 129. Be- 
smirch, stain. 

16. Will = intentions. 

18. Birth, rank into which he was born. 

21. Health = prosperity. (Health is the noun from heal, 
a by-form of hail. Cogs. : hale, (w)hole, etc.) 

23. Yielding", used in a passive sense. 

30. Credent, believing. (Credulous is hardly the mean- 
ing.) 

32. Rear, shot, danger — all military terms. 

34. Chariest, most careful or scrupulous. 

36. Scapes, escapes ; used in prose by Bacon and others. 

37. Canker for canker worm. 

38. Buttons . . . disclosed, buds opened. 
40. Blastments, blights. 

43. Effect, import. 

45. Ungracious = graceless. The un destroys the force 
of the ous. 
49. Recks, attends to. Cogs.: Reckon; reckless. 



Scene 3] NOTES 257 

Rede, advice. (H. Ger. Rath.) Fear me not. The me 

is here a dative, and the phrase is = Fear not for me. 

51. Double. Laertes had already taken leave of his 
father. 

57. Character, inscribe, engrave. 

58. Unproportioned, disproportionate, disorderly, un- 
suitable to the occasion. 

59. Vulgar = too familiar, too easy in making friends or 
permitting approach. ' Don't make yourself too cheap or 
common.' 

60. And their adoption tried = having been tried. 

61. Grapple, strongly bind. 

62. Dull thy palm, make thy palm callous. With 

entertainment = by entertaining or receiving. 

67. Censure, opinion. 

69. Expressed in fancy, marked or singular in device. 

75. Husbandry, economy. 

79. Season, ripen or bring to maturity. 

Professor Dowden remarks on the above speech, ' The 
advice of Polonius is a cento of quotations from Lyly's 
JEuphues. Its significance must be looked for less in the 
matter than in the sententious manner. Polonius has been 
wise with the little wisdom of worldly prudence. ... In the 
shallow lore of life he has been learned. Of true wisdom he 
never had a gleam. And what S. wishes to signify in this 
speech is, that wisdom of Polonius's kind consists in a set of 
maxims ; all such wisdom might be set down for the head- 
lines of copy-books, that is to say, his wisdom is not the 
outflow of a rich or deep nature, but the little accumulated 
hoard of a long and superficial experience. That is what the 
sententious manner signifies. And very rightly S. has put 
into Polonius's mouth the noble lines : — 

' " To thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." ' 



258 NOTES [Act I 

Yes, Polouius has got one great truth among his copy-book 
maxims, but it comes in as a little bit of hard, uuvital wis- 
dom, like the rest: "Dress well, don't lend or borrow 
money : to thine own self be true.'" ' — Dowden's Shakspere 
— His Mind and Art. 

81. Tend = attend. 

88. Bethought = thought of or recollected. 

91. Audience, listening or hearing. 

92. Put on me, told me. 

96. Give me up the truth. Polouius generally employs 
the most formal and official phrases he can find. 

99. Green, inexperienced. Still used in this sense. 

100. Unsifted, untried. Circumstance, used as a 

collective noun. 

104. Tenders (like banknotes) , promises to pay. 

105. Sterling", a broken-down form of Easterling. Ster- 
ling was the name of the English penny — the only legal 
tender in which payments could be made. Easterling s was 
the popular name in England for German traders from the 
Hanse Towns ; their money was of the purest quality. 

110. Fashion. Polonius takes the word in its second and 
lighter sense. 

113. Springes, snares. 'Woodcocks were popularly 

supposed to have no brains, and hence the word became a 
synonym for a simpleton. 

1 1(). Extinct, dead as soon as they are born — gone in the 
very making of them. 

117. A-making. The a is the broken-down form of an, 
a dialectic form of on. 

120. Your entreatments = the invitations you receive. 

125. Brokers, go-betweens. 

12(>. Investments, dress. 

127. Implorators, solicitors. 

128. For all = in short. Cf. the phrase, ' once for all.' 
130, Moment tor moment's. 



Scents 4] NOTES 259 



Scene 4 

Coleridge remarks, 'The unimportant conversation with 
which this scene opens is a proof of S.'s minute knowl- 
edge of human nature. It is a well-established fact that, 
on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event of mo- 
ment, men almost invariably endeavor to elude the pressure 
of their own thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and 
familiar circumstances. Thus the dialogue on the platform 
begins with remarks on the coldness of the air, and inquiries 
— obliquely connected indeed with the expected hour of the 
visitation, but thrown out in a seeming vacuity of topics, as 
to the striking of the clock, and so forth. The same desire 
to escape from the impending thought is carried on in Ham- 
let's account of, and moralizing on, the Danish custom of 
wassailing. . . . Besides this, another purpose is answered ; 
for, by thus entangling the attention of the audience in the 
nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech 
of Hamlet's, S. takes them completely by surprise on the 
appearance of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the 
suddenness of its visionary character.' 

1. Shrewdly, keenly. 

2. Eager, sharp. From Fr. aigre ; from Lat. acer. Cogs. : 
Vinegar; acrid. 

8. Wake, hold a late revel. 

9. Wassail, a drinking-bout. From O. E. wses hail = be 

well! health! Up-spring, the last, and, accordingly, 

the wildest dance at the old German merry-?naJcings. Up- 
spring is a noun, the object of reels. 

10. Rhenish. The wine produced in the Rheingau — be- 
tween Bonn and Bingen. 

12. Pledge, the health pledged or drunk. 

18. Traduced, slandered. Taxed, censured. An- 
other form of tax (by metathesis) is task. 

19. Clepe. call. S. has the word five times ; and Milton 



260 JVOTES [Act I 

has yclept. With swinish phrase = by calling us 

swine. 

20. Addition, title. 

21. At height == at our best, with all our power. 

22. Attribute = the reputation attributed to us. 
24. Mole of nature, inherited blemish. 

27. Some complexion (a quadrisyllable), natural dis- 
position or ' complexion.' ' There were four, distinguished 
by the old physicians — the sanguine, the melancholic, the 
phlegmatic, and the choleric. Men are discredited by some 
congenital defect, which they can no more cure than they can 
a mole on their skin, by the overgrowth of some natural 
temper, which reason cannot control, or by some acquired 
habit of unmannerliness.' — Moberly. 

30. Plausive, which is to be applauded. The indiscrimi- 
nate use of active and passive participles and adjectives was 
common in S.'s time. 

32. Nature's livery or fortune's star, a defect given 
(livre) by Nature, or a mark got by accident. The star 
might be a mark like a star. 

34. Undergo, carry. 

3G. E'il. The usual reading is eale. There are forty-seven 
conjectural readings of this famous passage; and it would 
take many pages to set them forth and to comment upon 
them. The sense is plain enough. It is, ' The small admix- 
ture of evil constantly destroys the substance, which is 
intrinsically noble, to the shame and disgrace of the 
substance.' 

37. Ever dout, always destroy or put out. 

The above speech is the first instance in the play of the 
generalizing spirit — predominance of the intellectual — 
which is one of the feelings that keep Hamlet from 
action. 

40. Spirit of health = a healed, that is, saved spirit. 

43. Questionable, inviting question. 



Scene 5] NOTES 261 

47. Hearsed, entombed. 

48. Cerements, shroud. From Lat. cera, wax. It was 
a kind of cloth, dipped in wax, and used to wrap the bodies 
of the dead in. 

53. Glimpses = gleams or glimmers (words which are 
cognate) . 

54. We ought to be us. Fools of nature = whom 

nature has made fools of. 

55. Disposition, constitution, nature. 
65. Set = value. 

71. Beetles, leans over. Beetle-brows are overhanging 
brows. 

73. Deprive your sovereignty of reason. Take 
away the sovereignty or government of your reason. 

75. Toys, freaks, fancies of a desperate character. 

82. Artery, nerve, and sinew were used interchange- 
ably in S.'s time. 

83. Nemean. The accent is usually on the second syl- 
lable. Nemea was the name of a rock in Argolis (in the 

Peloponnesus) , near which Hercules slew a great lion. 

Nerve, muscle. 

85. Lets me = hinders me. Cf. the phrase, without let 
or hindrance. (There are two words let in English. Let, 
to allow, is from O. E. last an ; and is the L. Ger. form of the 
H. Ger. lassen. Let, to hinder, is from O. E. last, slow, and 
is connected with late, lazy.) 

89. Have after = let us after him. 

91. It, the issue. 

Scene 5 

11. To fast. 'And moreover the misese of helle shal be 
in defaute of mete and drink.' — Chaucer. 

20. Porpentine, the form always used by S. One writer 
of the eighteenth century has porcuspine. 



262 XOTES [Act I 

21. Eternal blazon, revelation of the mysteries of 
eternity. 

33. Lethe wharf, Lethe's banks. In Antony, II. ii., the 

banks of the Nile are called ' the adjacent wharf.' 

Lethe, the river of forgetf illness in Hades. 

35. Orchard. Orchard and garden were synonymous. 

37. Process, account. 

38. Rankly, grossly. 

40. Prophetic soul. See I. ii. 254, where Hamlet says, 
* I doubt some foul-play.' 

62. Hebenon, henbane. 

63. It was a belief even among medical men in S.'s time 
that poison could be thus introduced into the system. 

()8. Posset, coagulate. A posset was a drink composed 
of hot milk, curdled by some strong infusion, and taken 
before going to bed. 

69. Eager, sour. 

71. Instant, instantaneous. Tetter, scab, scurf. 

Barked about, grew like bark around. 

72. Lazar = leper. The name came from Lazarus (see 
Luke xvi.). Hence Lazaretto, a house for lepers; then any 
hospital. 

75. Dispatched, a case of zeugma. It was the word life 
that suggested dispatched ; and then it was easily joined to 
the others. This is the only instance in S. of dispatch being 
followed by of. But the of is =from. 

77. Unhouseled. Housel was an O. E. word for offering 
or sacrifice. The word here is = without the eucharist. 

Disappointed, without the right appointments or 

preparations. Unaneled, without having received ex- 
treme unction. To anele (O. E. anoilen) was to anoint with 
oil or ele. 

81. Nature = natural feeling. 

88. Fare thee well. This thee — for thou — is to be 
explained, says Dr. Abbott, ' by euphonic reasons.' 



Scene 5] NOTES 263 

89. Matin, morning. 

90. Uneffectual. Either shining without heat or lost in 
the light of the morning. 

97. This distracted globe, his head — which Hamlet is 
clasping tight with both hands. 

98. Table = tablet. So tabled in S. means set doivn in 
writing ; and table-book = memorandum-book. 

100. Saws, sayings. The guttural in the O. E. segyan van- 
ished into a y in say, and into a iv in saw. Pressures = 

impressions. 

107. Tables. Memorandum-book. This slight action 
may relieve Hamlet's overwrought feelings. 

108. One may smile. The old habit of making general- 
izations and entering them in his notes is too much for 
Hamlet; and even at this tragic crisis of his life it over- 
comes him. 

115. Illo. The cry used by a falconer to recall his hawk. 

124. Arrant, thorough-going. 

127. Circumstance, ceremony or circumlocution. 

138. Honest ghost. Truly his father's ghost, and not 
the devil, as Horatio had feared. 

147. Upon my sword. The hilt of the sword being in 
the form of a cross. Swearing by the sword was also an 
old Scandinavian custom. 

150. Truepenny, honest fellow. 

152. Propose, speak before us. 

156. Hie et ubique, here and everywhere. 

165. Give it welcome. Receive it without doubt or 
question. CI. P. S. 

167. Your, unaccented, and used ' colloquially,' like the 
Lat. iste. 

172. Antic, odd, fantastic. Antic is a doublet of antique. 

174. Encumbered, folded. 

176. An if, a tautological phrase — like or ere. 

178. Giving out, assertion. 



264 XOTES [Act II 

180. Most = greatest. 

186. Friending" = friendliness. 

187. Shall not lack = shall not be lacking. 

ACT SECOND 

Scene 1 

The following scene admits us to the secret of the charac- 
ter of Lftertes, who is intended by S. as a foil to Hamlet. 
Laertes takes the word just as he finds it, and has no lofty 
aims or habits of meditation. 

7. Inquire me, a dative, often called by grammarians 
the dativus ethicus. Cf. Julius Csesar, I. ii. 268: 'He 

plucked me ope his doublet. Danskers, Danes. The sk 

is the Northern form of the softer English (which used to be 
Englise) ish. 

8. Keep, live. In Cambridge, England, the phrase, 
* Where do you keep ? ' is used for, ' Where do you lodge ? ' 

11. Come you = you are sure to come. More nearer. 

S. frequently uses both (1) the double comparative and (2) 
the double superlative. 

13. Take you = assume. 

19. Put on him = lay to his charge. 

20. Rank, gross* or serious. 

22, Slips, slight offenses. 

23. Noted, generally remarked. 

31. Breathe, speak. Quaintly, adroitly. 

34. Unreclaimed, untamed. 

35. Of general assault, such as generally assail youth. 
38. Fetch of warrant. This may either mean a war- 

rantable or justifiable contrivance, or a device which has 
been found to be effective. 

}-j. Him for he whom. The he is ■ attracted' into the ob- 
jective by the whom understood. 

13. Prenominate, aforesaid. 



Scene 1] NOTES 265 

45. Closes with you in this consequence, agrees with 
you in this conclusion. 
51. Leave = leave off. 

61. Of wisdom and of reach = wise and shrewd. Men 
of reach means far-sighted people. Cf. Mr. Burke's (and 
Lord Beaconsfield's) phrase, men of light and leading . 

62. Windlaces, winding and roundabout ways. To fetch 
a windlasse and to fetch a compass were phrases in S.'s 

time for to go round about Assays, essays or trials. 

Of bias, a metaphor taken from the game of bowls, in 
which the player does not send his bowl in a straight line, but 
trusts to the bias to bring it round to the required point. 

63. Indirections = indirect methods. 

65. Have me = understand me. 

66. God b' wi' you. The phrase ' God be with you,' 
now abbreviated to ' good-by.' 

75. Unbraced, unfastened. 

77. Down-gyved, sunk down to his ankles, where they 
looked like gyves or fetters. ('The exclusion from Ophe- 
lia's presence had been like the first knock of fate at the 
door of Hamlet's soul. He is claimed for his task.' — 

MOBERLY.) 

79. Purp6rt, meaning. 

88. As = as if. 

89. Shaking" of. The full construction was a-shaking of. 
92. Bulk, body. 

99. Ecstasy, madness. 

100. Whose violent property = the property of the vio- 
lence of which. Fordoes, undoes, destroys. 

106. Repel, send back. 

109. Quoted, marked, noted. 

110. Beshrew, a very mild form of imprecation. 

Jealousy, suspicion. 

111. Proper, in the sense of the Lat. proprium = a distin- 
guishing mark, appropriate. 



266 NOTES [Act II 

112. Cast beyond ourselves, overreach ourselves — are 
too shrewd aud canning. 

116. More grief to hide. If we hid this, it would cause 
more grief and annoyance (to the king) than it would cause 
hatred in him if we tell him that Hamlet is in love with you. 

Scene 2 

' In this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the 
skeleton of his former skill in statecraft, hunts the trail of 
policy at a dead scent, supplied by the weak fever smell in 
his own nostrils.' — Coleridge. 

2. Moreover that, over and above the fact that. 

6. Since. Another reading is sith. Since is a contrac- 
tion of sithennes, the genitive of sithen or sith. In the six- 
teenth century, sith was used of logical progression; since, 
of progression in time. 

11. Of so young- days = from so early a time. 

12. Neighbored to, closely associated with. 

13. That, repeated and redundant. Vouchsafe your 

rest = be good enough to reside. 

22. Gentry, courtesy. Only in this play used in this 
sense. 

23. Expend. The short form is spend. Cf. example and 
sample. 

24. Supply and profit = aid and furtherance. 

25. Visitation = visit. 
27. Of us = over us. 
30. Bent, inclination. 
42. Still = always. 

52. Fruit, the dessert. 

56. Doubt, suspect. The main (cause). 

60. Desires, good wishes. 

61. Upon our first audience or opening of our busi- 
ness. 



Scene 2] XOTES 267 

64. Truly modifies icas, not found. 

67. Borne in hand, played with and deceived. Cf . Ben 
Jonson's Widow, ii. 1: 'You have home me in hand this 
three months, and now fohbed me.' 

71. Assay, trial, proof. 

79. Regards of safety and allowance, such conditions 
as are safe and allowable. 

81. More considered time = time for more considera- 
tion. 

83. Well-took. S. has also drove for driven ; smote for 
smitten; mistook for mistake?!, etc. 

S6. Expostulate, discuss fully. 

90. Wit, wisdom. 

104. The remainder (is) thus. Perpend, consider 

or weigh. This use of learned Latin words — like expostu- 
late, perpend, etc. — is noticeable in the style of Polonius. 

108. Gather, and surmise, collect the data together and 
guess. 

116-119. Doubt. In the first and second lines, doubt 
means be doubtful about; in the third, suspect; in the 
fourth, disbelieve. 

121. Reckon, express in numbered verse. 

124. Whilst this machine is to him, so long as this body 
belongs to him. S.'s age was infected by this straining after 
effect, which Lyly's Euphues had made fashionable, and 
which was called Euphuism. 

126. More above = moreover. 

136. Had played the . . . table-book, had simply noted 
it down as if in my tables or memorandum-book, and let it 
go no further. 

137. Given my heart a -winking, had connived at the 
whole thing. 

139. Might = would you have been able. Round, 

roundly, without ceremony. 

140. Bespeak, address. 



268 NOTES [Act II 

141. Out of thy star = out of thy sphere. 

145. Took the fruits of, profited by. 

148. Watch, wakefulness, insomnia. 

149. Lightness = light headedness. 

151. All we = we all. Cf. Mark xii, 44: 'All they did 
cast in of their abundance.' Polonius's description of the 
stages of Hamlet's illness is very comic. He had in fact 
seen nothing; it was Ophelia, induced by Laertes, who told 
him. 

159. Center of the earth. 

163. Arras, the tapestry hung on the walls. A person 
might hide between the wall and it without being discov- 
ered. Great use is made of this in III. iv. (Arras is a town 
in the north of France, and gives its name to the hangings. 
Cf. bayonet, from Bayonne ; pistol, from Pistoja ; currant, 
from Corinth, etc.) 

164. Encounter, manner of address. 

168. Wretch, sometimes used as a term of endearment, 
mingled with pity. 

170. Board, accost. When Polonius is not pedantic, he 
is coarse. Presently, immediately. 

172. God-'a-mercy = God have mercy. 

174. Excellent for excellently. 

181. For . . . carrion. It has beeu supposed that Ham- 
let reads this out of his book. 

190. Matter. Hamlet purposely misunderstands Polo- 
nius's meaning of the word. 

195. Purging-, discharging. 

'joT. Pregnant, full of meaning. Happiness, felicity 

of phrase. 

226. Indifferent, middling, average. 

234. Doomsday, the Day of Judgment. (Doom is con- 
nected with deem, and with dom in kingdom, etc., and 
dempster, the old word for a judge.) 

lMl'. Confines, places of confinement. 






Scene 2] NOTES 269* 

259. Then are our beggars bodies ; for our beggars 
have no ambition, and are thus the only solid and substan- 
tial existences. 

260. Outstretched, strained, hyperbolical. 

261. Fay; from O. Fr.fei, faith. 

266. Most dreadfully attended by my own wretched 
thoughts. But Mr. Hunter thinks that ' Hamlet alludes to 
the annoyance of his being watched and observed so much.' 

267. Beaten, usually trod, familiar, usual. 

276. But to the purpose. For, if they did speak to the 
purpose, they must tell the truth. 

284. Consonancy, agreement in age. This word is only 
twice used by S. 

285. A better proposer, a more skillful speaker. — - 

Even, plain, honest. Direct, straightforward. ('A 

straight line is the shortest distance between two points.') 

289. Of you = on you. 

293. Prevent, anticipate, and so enable you to keep faith 
with those who have invited you. And the Prayer-Book has, 
1 Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings' (where prevent has 
the literal Latin sense of go before) . 

294. Moult, drop. The O. E. was mouten; and the I is 
inorganic, as the word comes from Lat. mutdre, to change. 
The place where hawks were kept was called mews — from 
the same root. 

295. Forgone, given up. (Usually, but erroneously, 
written foregone. The for is the negative prefix, as in for- 
ge t , fo rgo , fo rg ive, etc . ) 

299. Brave, beautiful, grand. 

300. Fretted, adorned. There were in O. E. two verbs 
fret — the one (1) , fretan, to eat (H. Ger. fressen, said of 
animals); the other (2), frsetwan, to adorn. For (1), see 
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale : ' The sowe freten the child 
right in the cradel.' For (2), Piers Plowman, ii. 11: ' Alle 
hir five fyngres were fretted with rynges.' 



210 XOTFS [Act II 

304. Express, expressive, or full of expression. 

306. Paragon, the peerless one, or highest pattern. 
From two Spanish prepositions, wara co)i = in comparison 
with. 

307. Quintessence, the fifth or highest essence of the 
alchemists — the essence which remained after the four 
' elements,' earth, air, fire, and water, had been removed 
from the substance. 

:U4. Lenten, meager, poor. During Lent players were 
not allowed to perform in London. 

315. Coted, came up with and passed. It was a term in 
hunting. 

317. He that plays the king. Hamlet here for the first 
time has a vague forecast in his mind of the plan he is going 
to form. 

320. Humorous = full of humors and whims. 

322. Lungs tickle o' the sere, lungs easily moved to 
laughter. The sere (now spelled sear) is the catch in a gun- 
lock which holds the hammer till it is released by the trigger. 
11* this part of the lock be so made, or it" it is much worn, the 
seal (or grip) may be so tickle, or ticklish, that a slight 
touch may displace it, and the gun goes off. The general 
idea here is of persons so prone to laughter that a touch of 

wit will start them. The Lady shall mar the measure 

rather than not express herself freely. 

326. The City, Copenhagen. Elsinore is the place at 
pr — nt. 

327. Residence = remaining in the city. 

329. Inhibition, prohibition to act. This may refer to 
tin- limiting of public performances in 1(500 and 1(501 to the 
two theaters called The Globe and The Fort un». Inno- 
vation. * the insurrection of Essex.' 

336. Aery (incorrectly spelled ei/ri/). an eagle's nest; a 
brood of eagles or hawks. From Low Lat. area, a nest 
of a bird of prey ; perhaps from Icelandic art, an eagle. 



Scene 2] NOTES 271 

Professor Skeat says, in his Etymological Dictionary, 
' When fairly imported into English, the word was ingen- 
iously connected with Middle English, ey, an egg, as if the 
word meant an eggery ; hence it came to be spelled eyrie or 

eyry, and to be misinterpreted accordingly. Eyases, 

nestlings, unfledged birds. 

337. Cry out on the top of question, at the top of 

their voices. Question here = speech. Tyrannically, 

so as to put down all different expressions of opinion. 

310. Wearing* rapiers, grown-up people. Goose- 
quills, those little eyases. The allusion here is to the 
boys of the chapel Royal, etc., whose performing of plays 
was fashionable when this play was written. 

343. Escoted, paid. A French word. (Cogs.: Shot; 
scot-free.) 

344. Quality, profession. 

346. Common players, players on the ' common (or pub- 
lic) stages.' 

348. Exclaim against their own succession. The 
men who write for them now wrong them, by making them 
exclaim against what they are themselves afterwards to be. 

349. Much to-do = much ado. 

350. Tarre, egg on. 

352. Argument, the plot of the play. The heading of 
each of the books of Paradise Lost is called The Argu- 
ment. 

357. Carry it away, carry off the palm. 

358. Hercules. They carry all the world before them. 
There is allusion to the sign of the Globe Theater — which 
was Hercules carrying the round earth. 

360. Mine uncle is king. Hamlet gives this as another 
instance of the facility with which honors are conferred on 
new claimants. 

361. Make mows, make grimaces. 
363. Picture in little = miniature. 



272 NOTES [Act II 

368. Appurtenance, that which properly belongs or ap- 
pertains to. 

369. Comply with you in this garb, show you ceremo- 
nious courtesy in this way. Extent, extending of 

courtesy. 

371. Show fairly outward, have an attractive appear- 
ance. 

376. Handsaw, an abbreviation of hermetic, or heron- 
shaw, a dialectic form of heron. Hamlet alludes to the sport 
of hawking. If a heron is started, he would probably fly 
with the wind; if the wind is N.N.W., he would fly to the 
south; and the rays of the sun would make it difficult to dis- 
tinguish the hawk from the heron. If the wind were south, 
the heron would fly north ; and, as the sun would be at the 
back of the sportsman, it would be easy to distinguish both 
birds. Hamlet means that he is only partially mad. 
CI. P. S. 

377. Well = good. 

381. Happily for haply. 

384. You say rig*ht. This is said to keep Polonius from 
fancying they have been talking about him. 

388. Roscius, a great actor at Rome, in 70 b.c. He taught 
Cicero to speak. Good actors were proverbially called 
Roscii. 

390. Buz, buz. Blackstone says, ' Buz used to be an in- 
terjection at Oxford when any one began a story that was 
generally known before.' 

392. Then came — probably a line from an old ballad. 

396. Scene individable, a play in which the unity of 
place is strictly adhered to. The Greek tragedy has no 
division into scenes, the scene remaining the same or undi- 
vided throughout the play. In the Gothic drama, or poem 
unlimited, the changes of scene were without definite limits. 

Poem unlimited, a play in which neither the unity 

of place nor that of time is observed. Seneca, the author 



Scene 2] NOTES 273 

of several tragedies in Latin — one of three persons who bear 
the name. 

397. Plautus, a Roman play-writer, twenty of whose 
plays are still extant. 

398. Law of writ and liberty. For adhering to the 
text or for extemporizing when need required. 

399. Jephthah. See Judges xi. and xii. The old song 
from which Hamlet quotes is to be found in Percy's 
Reliques. 

409. Follows. The two senses of coming after and of 
following, as a conclusion, are played upon. 

415. Row, stanza. Chanson, song— but used affect- 
edly, in ridicule of Polonius. 

416. Abridgment, used in two senses, that which cuts 
one short, and a pastime — dramatic performance, or other. 

419. Valanced, fringed with a beard. A valance is the 
higher hangings of a bed. 

421. My young lady. In the time of S. female parts 
were played by boys or young men. 

423. Chopine, ' a high cork shoe.' It was really a cork 
or wooden heel, sometimes from ten to eighteen inches 
high. 

424. Cracked within the ring. Douce says, ' There was 
a ring or circle on the coin, within which the sovereign's 
head was placed ; if the crack extended from the edge be- 
yond the ring, the coin was rendered unfit for currency.' 

426. French falconers, who will go at anything from an 
eagle to a wren — at game or not-game. 

428. Passionate, full of passion or emotion. 

433. Caviare, a Russian condiment, made from the 
sturgeon's roe. Being a new dish, highly seasoned and of 
peculiar flavor, it was not much relished by the common 
people, and is therefore used by S. to signify something 

above the comprehension of the crowd. The general, 

the public, the ' masses.' 



274 NOTES [Act II 

435. In the top of mine, were superior to mine. 

436. Modesty, moderation and good taste. Cunning", 

skill. 

437. No sallets. ' Nothing that gave a relish to the lines 
as salads do to meat.' 

439. Indict, accuse. 

441. Handsome than fine. Handsome denotes natural 
beauty; fine, that given by conscious art. 

443. Thereabout, that part. We still say his where- 
abouts. 

446. The Hyrcanian beast, the tiger. Hyrcania was 
the name of that part of Persia which lies south of the 
Caspian. 

448. The following lines are written in a highly elaborate 
style, so as to throw them well out from the background of 
the play, the diction of which is to be taken as that of real 
life. 

450. The ominous horse, the Trojan horse, designed by 
Ulysses, built of wood and filled with Greek warriors. 
Ominous means here fatal. 

453. Gules, the heraldic term for red. From Lat. quia, 

the mouth —from the color of the open mouth. Tricked, 

painted. 

455. Impasted = covered over as with a paste. The only 

instance of the word. The parching- streets = the dry 

dust of the streets. 

458. O'er-sized, covered over as with size or glue. 

467. Unequal for unequally. 

470. Ilium, Troy. (Hence the Story of Troy is called 
the Iliad.) 

474. Milky for milk-white. 

476. Painted Tyrant. Malone says, ' S. had in his 
mind the tremendous personages often represented in old 
tapestry, whose uplifted arms stick in the air, and do 
nothing.' 



Scene 2] NOTES 275 

477. Neutral, taking no part in the contest. Matter, 

what he had to do. 

479. Against = before the coming of, on the approach of. 

480. Rack, the highest and lightest clouds. The heavens 
must he silent and windless when they stand still. 

483. Region, the sky or air. 

484. A- work = to work. 

486. Proof, power of resistance. Eterne. S. has this 

form only twice. 

487. Remorse, pity. 

491. Fellies, fellowes, the parts of which the ring of the 
wheel is composed. 

496. Jig, a facetious ballad. 

498. Mobled, muffled up. There is a kind of women's 
cap called a mob-cap — ' a full high cap.' 

502. Bisson rheum, blinding tears. 

504. O'er-teemed, that had borne many children. 

511. Instant, instantaneous. 

513. Milch = milk-giving ; a metaphor for tearful. 

514. Passion = sorrow or compassion. 

519. Bestowed, lodged. 

520. Abstracts, epitomes. 

525. Odd's bodikins (by the body of God), a reference 
to the wafer in the sacrament. 

527. After = according to. Use them after your 

own honor, etc.— the key-note to the character of a gen- 
tleman. 

534. Can you play. The pronoun changes from thou to 
yon. You = You and your company. 

547. Peasant slave. Most probably serfs — ascripti 
glebss — still existed in England in S.'s time. 

550. Conceit, imagination, conception. 

551. Her working = the working of his soul. 

553. Whole function, the action of every member of the 
body. 



276 NOTES [Act II, Scene 2 

558. Cue, the prompt word; a stage term. 
560. The general ear, the ear of the public. 
561 Free from guilt and remorse of conscience. 
562. Amaze, confound. 

564. Muddy-mettled, irresolute. Rascal, formerly 

the name for a lean deer, ' one fit neither to hunt nor to kill. 

Peak, literally pine, grow lean; figuratively, as here, 

play a contemptible part. 

565. John-a-dreams == John of dreams, or John the 

Dreamer; a dreamy, idle fellow. Cf. Jack-a-lantern. 

Unpregnant, not quickened with, nor inspired by. 

567. Property = everything that was proprium to him as 
a king and as a man. 

568. Defeat — ruin, destruction. 

575. Pigeon-livered. It was supposed that doves and 
pigeons owed their gentleness of disposition to the absence 
of gall. S. has also lily-livered, white-livered, and milk- 
livered. Gall to make oppression bitter. To make 

me feel the bitterness of oppression. 

577. The region kites = the kites of the sky. 

579. Kindless, opposed to kindly in the phrase in the 
Prayer-Book, ' the kindly fruits of the earth.' 

586. About ! = To ivork ! 

595. Tent = probe. (From Lat. tentare, to try.) 

Blench, start, or flinch. 

(501. Abuses, deceives. 

(502. Relative, conclusive, more to the purpose. The 
only instance of the adjective in this sense. 



Act III, Scene 1] NOTES 277 

ACT THIRD 

Scene 1 

1. Drift of Circumstance = course of roundabout in- 
quiry. 
3. Grating", irritating. 

7. Forward, very ready. 

8. Keeps. The nominative must be taken out of him. 
12. Disposition, mood. 

15. Assay him to = try his inclination for. 

17. O'er-raught = overtook. Raught is the past of 
reach (the ch having been at one time a pure guttural). 

26. Edg , e, incitement. JEgg, to instigate, and edge are 
two forms of the same word. 

30. Closely = secretly. 

32. Affront = confront, meet. S. has also, To affront his 
etje. 

33. Lawful espials, spies with a right to be inquisitive. 
41. Wildness, madness. 

44. Gracious — spoken to the king. 

48. 'Tis too much proved, too frequently experienced. 

55. In the mind belongs to suffer. 

58. Take arms" ag*ainst a sea. A mixed metaphor, or 
rather two metaphors blended into one. 

62. No more = nothing more. 

6G. The rub, hindrance. A metaphor taken from the 
game of bowls. Whatever turned the bowl from its course 
was called a rub. 

68. Mortal coil = turmoil of this world. 

69. Give us pause, compel us to stop. Respect, 

consideration. 

70. Of so long" life. " The consideration that induces us 
to undergo the calamity of so long life," or " that makes 
calamity so long-lived." 

71. Of time = of the world. 



278 XOTES [Act III 

75. Takes = puts up with. 

76. A legal term for the settlement of an account. Quie- 
tus est, he is quiet = discharged. The same idea is con- 
tained in the word acquit, which is from Lat. quietus ; and 
in pay, from Lat. pacare, to bring to peace. 

77. Bodkin, a small dagger. Fardels, burdens, the 

older Fr. form of fardeau, a pack or bundle. 

78. Grunt, a strong cognate of groan ; as snoj't is of s)iore. 
Grunt had not in S.'s time the lower meaning which it now 
has. Weary, from ivear. 

80. Bourn, limit or boundary. The r seems to be intru- 
sive and inorganic: and bourn is a doublet of bound. 

81. Puzzles, a continuative or frequentative from pose. 

85. The native hue, natural color. 

86. Cast, tinge, coloring. The only passage where the 

word is used in this sense. Thought, anxious reflection. 

S. sometimes uses thought for sorrow. 

89. Soft you now, Hush! 

90. Orisons, prayers. Orison is a doublet, through Fr., 
of oration (from orare, to pray). Cf. benison and benediction, 

94. Remembrances, souvenirs, mementos. 

100. Their perfume = the sweet odor of the words. 

102. Wax. grow. 

110. Commerce, intercourse. 

119. Relish of it, have some flavor of it. 

122. Indifferent = fairly. 

126. At my beck, ever ready to swarm round me at the 
smallest suggestion. 

141. Monsters = monstrosities. Both S. and Milton use 
monster in the literal Latin sense of monstrum, something 
to be pointed at (from monstrare, to show). 

144. Your painting", the your here, as in other parts of 
Hamlet's remarks, refers to women generally, as shown by 
the plural yourselves. 

146. Jig = walk as if dancing a jig. Nickname, a 



Scene 1] XOTES 279 

corruption of an ekename, " an additional name," the a 
having dropped away from the article. 

147. Wantonness . . . ignorance == You mistake in 
wanton affectation, and pretend that you do it through 
ignorance. 

155. Expectancy = the hope. The only passage where 

the word is so used. Rose = flower. Fair, used 

proleptically — because made fair by the rose. 

156. Mold of form = model of beauty (like Lat. forma), 
by whom all endeavored to form themselves. 

157. Of, by. 

160. Sovereign, supreme — that ought to be above all. 
Sovereign is a conventional misspelling; on the mistaken 
notion that it comes from Lat. regnwn, a kingdom. It 
comes from Late Lat. superaneus ; and Milton always spells 
sovran and sovranty. 

162. Blown = in its bloom, in full blow. 

163. Ecstasy, madness. 

168. On brood, brooding. 

169. Doubt, fear. Disclose, 'the technical term for 

the young birds chipping their shell.' 

170. For to. Dr. Abbott (sect. 152) says, ' For to was very 
common in Early English and A. S., and is not uncommon in 
the Elizabethan writers. It probably owes its origin to the 
fact that the prepositional meaning of to was gradually weak- 
ened as it came to be considered nothing but the sign of the 
infinitive. Hence, for was added to give the notion of motion 
or purpose.' Cf . Luke vii. 24 : ' What went ye ouc for to see ? ' 

175. Variable == various. 

176. Something settled = somewhat settled, having a 
tolerably fixed position. 

178. Fashion of himself = his usual behavior. 

186. Round, plain spoken. 

187. In the ear = within hearing. 

188. Find = find out or detect his secret. 



280 NOTES [Act III 



Scene 2 

f This dialogue of Hamlet with the Players is one of the 
happiest instances of Shakespeare's power of diversifying 
the scene, while he is cariying on the plot.' — Coleridge. 

2. Trippingly. Hamlet is anxious that there should be 
no halting or imperfection in the recital of the speech he 
has written. 

3. I had as lief = I would as soon. Lief is an adj. 

(O. E. or A. S., leof, dear ; H. Ger. lieb.) 1 had is not the 

indicative, but the subjunctive (cf. H. Ger. hiitte) = I would 
have ; and the older form of the phrase was, Me were as 
lief— It were as dear to me. 

8. Temperance, moderation. 

9. Robustious, sturdy and violent. Periwig-pated. 

In S.'s time, wigs were worn only by actors; and they did 
not come into general use until the reign of Charles II. 

11. Groundling's, the hearers (who paid one penny for 
their standing-room) in the pit, which in S.'s time con- 
tained neither floor nor benches. 

12. Capable of nothing', understand nothing. Inex- 
plicable = unintelligible. 

14. Termagant, a character in the old mystery-plays — 

a scolding god of the ' Saracens.' Out-herods. Herod 

was also a favorite, and always a violent character, in the 
mystery-plays. A stage-direction in one of these old plays 
was ' Here Erode ragis.' 

20. Modesty, moderation. 

21. From the purpose = away from. 

25. Pressure, impression. Come tardy off, dully 

and inefficiently represented. 

28. Censure, judgment. 

29. There be. Dr. Abbott (sect. 300) says, ' Be is much 
more common with the plural than with the singular.' 

37. Indifferently, fairly well. 



Scene 2] NOTES 281 

42. Barren of wit, opposed to ' fertile ' brains (like H. 
Ger. geistreich) . 

57. Conversation, intercourse with human beings. 

Coped, met, had to do with. (Cope is really another form 
— or doublet— of chop, to exchange. Cogs.: Cheap, a 
market ; chap ; chapman ; Chipping Norton ; Copenhagen ; 
Kippen; Chippenham ; H. Ger. Kaufen.) 

62. Candied, sugared, nattering. 

63. Crook. The nominative to crook is tongue — a vio- 
lent case of mixed metaphor. Pregnant == ready to bow. 

64. Thrift (from thrive) , gain or success. 

66. Of men distinguish. S. has also distinguish of 
colors. 

71. Blood and judgment = emotions and intellect, pas- 
sion and reason. 

72. Pipe. Hamlet uses the same metaphor in line 351. 
76. Something" too much. This single sentence, the 

self-restraint of it, and the thoughtfulness, moderation, and 
sanity of this whole speech, utterly upset all the theories 
about Hamlet's so-called ' madness.' 

80. A-foot, going on. 

81. With the very comment, with the most intimate 
and real intuition of thy mind. 

82. Occulted, carefully concealed. The only instance of 
the word. 

83. Uukennel itself, come out of its hole. (Kennel is 
from Low Lat. canile, a place for dogs; just as ovile came 
from ovis, a sheep.) 

86. Stithy, smithy. The stithy is the place where the 
itith or anvil stands. It is a cognate of stead (in bedstead) , 

steady, etc. Heedful note, notice full of heed or 

care. 

89. In censure of his seeming, in forming an opinion 
of his appearance. 

91. Pay the theft = pay for what is stolen. 



282 NOTES [Act III 

92. Idle, perhaps light-headed (again) — so as to throw 
them off the scent. Shakespeare uses the word so. 

94. Fares = is. Cf. the phrases : How fares the king ? 
fare you well; how well she fares. But Hamlet intention- 
ally misunderstands it in the sense of feeds. 

95. The Chameleon was supposed to live on air. 

98. Have nothing* with this answer = this is no answer. 

101. In the university. The practice of acting Latin plays 
in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge is very ancient, 
and continued to nearly the middle of the 18th century. 

105. Julius Caesar. A Latin play on this subject was 

acted at Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1582. 1' the 

Capitol. But Caesar was not killed there; it was in the 
Council-house of Pompey (Curia Pompeii) that he fell. 

109. Stay upon = await. 

119. Within's - within this. 

123. Sables. YVarburton read, ' 'Fore I'll have a suit 
of sable.' Johnson observed that the fur of sables is not 
black; a suit trimmed with sables was magnificent, and not 
a mourning garment. Hudson adopts a suggestion of Wight- 
wick, and reads sabell, flame-color. But Hamlet's jest lies 
in the ambiguity of the word ; sables, the fur, and sable, the 
black of heraldry. See IV. vii. 81, whence it appears that 
sables were the livery of " settled age." "What an age 
since my father died ! I am quite an old gentleman ! " — with 
an ambiguity of apparent self-contradiction in Hamlet's 
maimer, on the meaning, black — ''I mean to be rich and 
comfortable; and the devil must be the only personage who 
always wears black, his accustomed garb." — Dowdex. 

127. Not thinking 1 on. being forgotten. The hobby- 
horse, a figure in the old May-day games and Morrice- 
< lances, which were put down by the Puritans. The man's 
legs went through the body of the horse, enabling him to 
walk, but covered by a long boot-cloth. False legs were 
attached to the saddle. 



Scene 2] NOTES 283 

131. Miching Mallecho, secret, sneaking mischief. Mai- 
hecho (Spanish) = an evil action. (From Lat. male, ill,. 
and factum, done. The Lat./ becomes in Spanish h, as in 
filius and hijo.) 

133. Belike, probably, or I suppose. Argument. 

plot. 

143. Posy, motto. 

146. Phoebus' cart = the sun. ' The style of the inter- 
lude here is distinguished from the real dialogue by rhyme, 
as in the first interview with the players, by epic verse.' — 
Coleridge. 

147. Salt wash = the sea. Tellus, the Earth (per- 
sonified). 

148. Sheen, light. It is the noun from shine. S. has also 
starlight sheen. 

151. Commutual, a strong form of mutual. 

154. "Woe is me, The dative. 

155. Cheer = cheerfulness. 

156. Distrust you = fear for you. 

158. Holds, the old Northern plural. There were, in 
English, down to the fourteenth century, three ways of 
making the plural: Northern, in es, as toe hopes; Midland, 
in en, we hopen; Southern, in th, we hopeth. Of these, the 
first two survived to S.'s time ; and even the last is found in 
doth and hath. Holds quantity = are in exact pro- 
portion. 

159. In neither aught = nothing in either. In ex- 
tremity — in extreme measure. 

162. Littlest. Gooder, goodest; b adder and baddest, are 
found in Elizabethan writers. 

165. Operant, operative, active. Leave for leave off. 

To do = to perform. 

172. Wormwood, for the king. 

173. Instances, inducements. — — Move, form the motive 
for. 



284 NOTES [Act III 

174. Respects of thrift, consideration of economy. 

176. Break, pronounced breek. In Lancashire people still 
say breek fa st. 

177. The slave to memory. We keep our purpose only 
so long as we remember it. 

178. Validity, strength, worth. 

180. Fall unshaken = falls without shaking. The con- 
struction suddenly changes, influenced probably by the col- 
lective noun fruit. 

182. To ourselves, alone. 

186. Enactures, resolutions. 

187. The disposition that is capable of the highest joy is 
also most cast down by grief. 

190. Our loves == our lovers or friends. 
198. Seasons. The ' trial ' of the hollow friend brings his 
hidden hostility to ripeness. 

207. Desperation, despair. 

208. An anchor's cheer, an anchorite's or hermit's fare. 
Ancor is the O. E. form. The word is from Gr. anachoretes, 

one who has separated himself from others. My scope, 

the utmost limit of my enjoyment. 

209. Opposite, contrary thing. In S. it generally means 

opponent. Blanks, blanches or pales. The only instance 

of the verb. 

221. Is there no offence in't? But the king had seen 
the ' dumb show,' and must have known the plot of the 
play to be acted. Halliwell supposes that ' the king and the 
queen may have been directed to whisper confidentially to 
each oilier during the dumb show, and so escape the sight of 
it.' 

22(>. Tropically, metaphorically. A trope is a turning of 
a word from one use to another; a tropic is a turning-line, 
from which the sun appears to begin to go back. From Gr. 
trepd, 1 turn. 

227. Image, representation. 



Scene 2] NOTES 285 

228. Duke. This seems to be an oversight, as elsewhere 
he is called king. 

231. Our withers are un wrung, our shoulders are free 
from pain. 

234. A chorus, which explained or commented on the 
action of the play in Greek tragedies. 

235. Interpret. The interpreter at a puppet-show sat on 
the stage and explained the proceedings to the audience. 

239. 'The croaking raven.' A quotation from an old 
play. 

242. Confederate season, the time being in conspiracy 
with the murderer. 

246. Wholesome, healthy. (The w in whole is inorganic, 

as it comes from heal.) Usurp. The nominatives are 

magic and property. 

252. False fire, blank cartridge. 

261. Feathers were much worn on the stage in the time 
of S. 

262. Turn Turk = turn completely round for the worse, 
as from a Christian to a Mussulman. 

263. Provincial from Provence, a province of France, 

famous for roses. The roses were rosettes of ribbon. 

Razed, slashed. 

264. Cry, company. Generally applied to a pac&o//ioimc?s. 

265. Half a share. The actors in S.'s time had not an- 
nual salaries, but shares, a share, or part of a share in the 
profit. 

267. Damon. Hamlet here gives the name of Damon to 
Horatio — an allusion to the old classical story of the close 
friends, Damon and Pythias. 

270. Pa jock = (he avoids the word ass) peacock, prob- 
ably corrupt for pat chock, a clown. 

273. Pound, the O. E. plural as in stone, deer, fish, year, 
zointer, summer, which had no mark for the plural number. 

278. Recorders, a kind of flageolet. 



286 NOTES [Act III 

280. Perdy, a corruption of the French par Dleu. 

286. Distempered, discomposed. 

287. With drink. Hamlet intentionally misunderstands. 

288. Choler, auger. From Gr. cholos, the bile. 

291. Purgation, in both the legal and the medical sense 
of the word. 
291. My affair = the business I bring before you. 
295. Pronounce, speak out. 

301. Wholesome, sane, sensible. 

302. Pardon, leave to go. 
312. Admiration, wonder. 
316. Closet, chamber. 

319. Trade, business. Hamlet purposely selects the 
lower word. 

321. So, with a double sense — in the same way, just as 

much as I ever did. Pickers and stealers, hands, 

which the Church Catechism warns must be kept ' from pick- 
ing and stealing.' 

322. Your cause of = the cause of your. 

329. The proverb is " Whylst grass doth grow, oft sterves 
the seely steede " (" While grass doth grow, the silly horse 
he starves.") Something", somewhat. 

331. To withdraw with you = to speak a word in pri- 
vate with you. 

332. Go about, do what you can. To recover the 

wind, to get to windward, as if I were a deer, and you were 
stalking me. A hunting term. 

333. Toil, net. Toil, to labor, is an English word, con- 
nected with till ; toil, a net, is from Fr. toile, from Lat. tela, 
a web. 

334. If my duty, etc. " If my duty makes me too bold, 
it is because of my love for you and regard for your wel- 
fare." 

343. Ventages, wind-holes. (From Lat. ventus, wind. 
Cog., Ventilation.) 



Scene 3] NOTES 287 

351. Seem to know, put on the appearance of knowing. 

357. Fret, probably used in two senses. Frets are stops 
or small lengths of wire fastened on to serve as guides to 
the fingers. Hamlet uses the word with a double meaning. 

369. By and by = at once. The procrastination natural 
to the human race has given a meaning of delay both to this 
phrase and to presently. 

370. To the top of my bent — probably a metaphor from 
a bow. To the highest pitch. 

381. Nero, who murdered his mother, Agrippina. 

385. Shent (past participle from shend. Cf. H. Ger. 
Schande, shame), rebuked. 

386. To give them seals = to seal or confirm them by 
acts. 

Scene 3 

2. Range, have free scope and play. 

5. The terms of our estate, the condition of our 
power. 

8. Most holy . . . fear = it is our duty to feel anxious 
about. 

11. Single and peculiar life = private person. 

13. Noyance, injury. 

14. "Weal (wealth), welfare. 

• 15. Cease, decease. The only instance of cease as a noun. 
S. is very fond of using the abstract for the concrete. 

16. Gulf, whirlpool. 

17. Massy = massive. S. never has massive; nor has 
Milton. 

20. Mortised. A mortise is a hole cut in one piece of 
timber to receive the tenon of another piece. 

21. Annexment. The only instance of the word in S. 

22. Ruin, the act of falling. The primary sense of Lat. 
ruina. 



288 XOTES [Act III 

25. Fear. For the object of fear see note on line 15. 

29. Process, proceedings. Tax him home, reprove 

him soundly. 

31. More audience, other hearers. 

33. Of vantage, from an advantageous (concealed) posi- 
tion. 

47. To confront the visage, to stand face to face with. 

49. Forestalled, prevented. 

55. Ambition, the position I was ambitions to have. 

Like offence in the next line, which is = the advantages 
gained by it. 

57. Currents . . . hand. A mixed metaphor. 

59. The wicked prize, the gain got by wickedness. 

61. There, emphatic. Lies, in the legal sense. 

64. Rests = Lat. Quid restat ? What remains? 

68. Limed = caught (as with bird-lime). 

69. Engaged, entangled. 

75. "Would be scanned. Requires examination. 

80. Grossly, when in a gross (unshrived) condition. 

Full of bread. So in Ezekiel xvi. 49, the sin of Sodom is 
said to have been ' pride, fulness of bread, and abundance 
of idleness.' 

81. Crimes. In the general sense of sins. Flush, in 

the prime, full of vigor. 

82. Audit, examination of his accounts — the debit and 
credit sides. 

83. Our circumstance. Circumstance = the details we 
can run over. 

84. 'Tis heavy. He has a heavy reckoning. 

85. To take him = by taking him. 

86. Passage to the other world. The bell tolled at the 
death of a person was called the ' passing-bell. ' 

8<S. Hent, grip. (The verb hentan gives hand, hunt, etc.) 
95. This Physic, ■ this forbearance of mine merely puts 
off the end.' 



Scene 4] XOTES 289 



Scene 4 

1. Straight = straightway. 

2. Broad, too strong or unrestrained. 

4. Heat, anger. 'Sconce for ensconce. 

14. Rood = the holy rood or cross. A common oath. 

21. Wilt thou do ? There was nothing in Hamlet's 
words to alarm the queen; it was probably his manner. 

34. Busy, in the sense it has in busy-body — officious. 

39. Proof = armor of proof. Sense = feeling. So not 

sensible of fire meant feeling no heat. 

46. Dicers, gamblers (with dice). 

47. Contraction, the marriage-contract. 

49. Glow with shame.- 

50. Solidity = solid mass of the earth. Compound 

= composite. 

51. Tristful, a hybrid, trist (from tristis, sorrowful) 

being Lat. and ful English. As against the doom, 

as if doomsday were at hand. 

52. Thought-sick, sick with misery 

53. The index was, in S.'s time, placed at the beginning 
of the book. 

55. Counterfeit, generally used by S. as a noun, in the 
sense of portrait. Presentment = representation. 

59. Station, attitude. 

66. Wholesome = healthy. Cf . Pharaoh's dream in 
Genesis xli. 5-7. 

68. Batten, grow fat ; connected with bet in better ; cf . 
also boot = profit, in bootless, to boot. 

70. Heydey , frolic and gayety. Only here used as a noun. 

71. Waits upon, follows. 

72. Sense. Here meaning sensation ; in the next line it 
means reason. 

74. Apoplexed, paralyzed as with a stroke of apoplexy. 



290 NOTE 8 [Act III 

The only instance of the verb. Would not err. The so 

of the next line belongs also to err. 

77. To serve = to be of use in a case where the difference 
was so very striking. 

78. Cozened, cheated. Said to come from coz — the con- 
traction of cousin — hence = to treat a person as a relation 
for the purpose of advantage. Hoodman-blind = blind- 
man's-buff. 

82. Mope, be so dull and stupid. 

91. Grained = dyed in grain. Originally grain (from 
Lat. granum, a seed) was restricted to the dye kermes, ob- 
tained from the coccus insect — a scarlet dye; but it was 
afterwards applied to any thoroughly fast dye. 

92. Leave their tinct = give up their color. Now spelled 
tint. 

94. In = into. Like modern H. Ger., in in older English 
meant into as well as in. 

97. A vice = a clown. In the old Morality-plays — which 
took the place of the older Mystery -plays — Vices and Virtues 
were personified; and the Vice took the place of Satan. 
The modern clown is the representative of the Vice. 

98. Cutpurse. Purses were attached to the girdle, and 
hung outside — as ladies now carry their pockets. 

99. From a shelf — like a sneak. 

101. Shreds and patches, the motley dress of the clown 
and the Vice. 

106. Lapsed in time and passion, having let time go 
by and spent force in passion and words. 

111. Amazement, trouble and distractedness. 

113. Conceit, imagination. In S., conceit means idea; 
invention ; mental faculty ; imagination ; but never has the 
modern sense. 

117. Incorporal for incorporeal, immaterial. 

119. The alarm, the call to arms; from Italian alV arm'e. 

120. Bedded, laid flat. Excrements, excrescences 



Scene 4] NOTES 291 

or outgrowths — like hair and the nails. Used — like so 
many other words — in its primary sense by S. ; from Lat. ex, 
out of, and crescere, to grow (cf. increment, from increscere). 

126. Capable of feeling and acting. 

128. Stern effects, the effects my sternness must bring 
about. 

134. In his habit as = in the dress he used to wear when 
alive. 

142. Re-word, repeat word for word. 

143. Gambol from, skip and run from. For love == 

for the love. Dr. Abbott (sect. 89) says, ' The was frequently 
omitted before a noun already defined by another noun, 
especially in prepositional phrases.' 

150. Compost and composture, used by S. for manure. 
154. Curb and woo = bow and beg. Curb is used in its 
primary sense, from Fr. courber, to bend. 

159. Assume, not in the modern sense; but in the pri- 
mary Latin sense of assumo — put on, take to yourself (as 
you would a dress) . 

160. Sense doth eat, eats away gradually or destroys 
the original meaning of actions. S. is fond of using eat in 
this sense. 

164. Put on. This fully explains the meaning of the word 
assume. 

167. Use . . . change . . . nature. ' Custom is a second 
nature.' 

170. To be blessed by God = when you have repented. 

171. For = as for. 

174. Their, referring to heaven. In several passages, S. 
regards heaven as a plural. 

175. Bestow, stow away. Answer, account for. 

181. Bloat, for bloated. 

182. To ravel . . . out = to unravel. 

183. Essentially am not = am not essentially or really. 
186. Paddock, toad. From O. E. padde, a toad or a frog. 



292 NOTES [Act IV 

The -ock is a diminutive termination (as in hillock, etc.). 

Gib, a tom-cat. From Gilbert. The she-cat was called 

Graymalkin — Malkin being a diminutive of Mall or Moll 
= Mary. 

187. Concerning^, concerns. 

189-192. It has been conjectured that there existed a 
story about an ape, who opened a basket containing live 
pigeons, got into the basket himself, * tried conclusions ' — 
whether he could fly like them — and so broke his neck. 

191. Conclusions, experiments. 

202. Enginer. S. has also the forms pioner, mutiner, 
pvlpiter i etc. 

203. Hoist for hoisted. Petar, petard, a kind of gre- 
nade for breaking open gates. 

20b'. Crafts. Two secret mines meet. 
211. Toward an end, a mocking reference to Polonius's 
old interminable speeches. 
Severally = in different directions. 



ACT FOURTH 

Scene 1 

I. Profound, deep. But the other sense of profounds 
suggests to S. the word translate. 

II. Brainish, brain-sick, mad. 

18. Kept short, under control. Out of haunt = away 

from the company of others. 

22. Divulging", being divulged. 

2.">. Ore, always used by S. in the sense of a vein of gold. 

26. Mineral, a mine. 

36. Speak fair. Speak gently or kindly. 

40. Untimely (an adverb), used by S. of violent death. 

41. O'er the world's diameter, to the very ends of the 
earth. 



Scene 3] NOTES 293 

42. Blank, the white mark in the center of the target at 
which aim was taken. 

43. Shot. A whisper transporting a shot (which is poi- 
soned) is another instance of mixed metaphor. 

Scene 2 

12. Demanded of, questioned by. 

13. Replication, reply or echo. 

15. Countenance, patronage. 

16. Authorities = offices of authority. 

18. Mouthed, put in his mouth. The only instance of 
the word in this sense. 

23. Sleeps. S. often uses sleep to denote a state of idle- 
ness or uselessness. 

26. With the king. Hamlet probably talks apparent 
nonsense here as elsewhere to deceive the courtiers. Yet he 
has some private meaning ; perhaps his ' king ' refers in one 
case to his father, and in the other to Claudius. 

30. Of nothing, of no value. Hide fox, and all 

after! The signal used by schoolboys in those days for 
beginning the game of Hide-and-seek. 

Scene 3 

6. Scourge, punishment. 

9. Deliberate pause, not a sudden measure, but the re- 
sult of deliberate arrangement. 

21. Politic worms. Probably one of S.'s plays upon 
words — an allusion to the German Imperial Diets held at 
Worms. 

24. Variable for various. 

30. A progress, a royal state journey. 

33. Send, for you cannot go. 

43. Tender, have a regard for. Dearly, heartily. 

45. "With fiery quickness = ' in hot haste.' 



294 NOTES [Act IV 

46. At help, ready to assist. 

47. Tend, attend. 

56. At foot, close to his steps. CI. P. S. 

59. Leans on, depends on. 

60. At aught = at any price at all. 

62. Cicatrice ; from Lat. cicatricem, a scar. 

63. Free awe, awe spontaneously accorded. 

64. Set, estimate. 

65. Process, procedure. 

66. C6njuring" = adjuring. We frequently find in S. the 
phrase, ' I do conjure thee.' 

67. Present, immediate. 

68. Hectic, fever. 

Scene 4 

6. Express our duty, give expression to our homage 
and reverence. In his eye, in his presence. 

8. Softly, slowly — an order to his soldiers, not to the 
captain. 

<). Powers, forces. 

14. The main, the whole country. 

19. Five = but five. Farm, take it on lease. 

21. Ranker, richer, greater. In fee, out and out, with 

absolute possession. 

25. Debate = decide. (The literal meaning of debattre 
to beat down thoroughly.) 

26. Imposthume, internal abscess. 

:;:». Market of his time, that for which he markets or 
exchanges his time. 

35. Large discourse, wide range of discursive inquiry 
and reasoning. 

:;8. Fust, <^row fusty or moldy. 

39. Bestial oblivion, forgetfulness such as one might 
expect from the lower animals. Craven, cowardly. 



Scene 5] NOTES 295 

40. Scruple of thinking', which consists in thinking. 

Event, issue, outcome of one's actions. 

45. Gross, palpable, obvious. ' Hamlet envies every- 
one who has quick and determined resolution, and whose 
energy does not, like his own, evaporate in meditation, 
and pass by opportunity after opportunity for action.' — 
Moberly. 

46. Charge, cost. 

48. Puffed, inspired. 

49. Makes mouths, mocks. Invisible event, the 

issue which he cannot see. 

50. Unsure, insecure. 

53. Argument, subject (of dispute). 

60. Fantasy and trick of fame, an imaginary point of 
honor. A hendiadys. 

63. Continent, in the primary sense of the Lat. conti- 
nentem = that which contains. Cf . Midsummer, II. i. ; 
* They (the rivers) have overborne their continents.' 

Scene 5 

Sir Joshua Reynolds says, ' There is no part of the play 
more pathetic than this scene, which, I suppose, proceeds 
from the utter insensibility Ophelia has to her own misfor- 
tunes. A great sensibility, or none at all, seems to produce 
the same effect. In the latter, the audience supply what she 
wants, and with the former they sympathize.' 

6. Spurns, kicks. Enviously, angrily, spitefully. 

8. Unshaped, formless. 

9. Collection, in the literal Latin sense of colligo, I 
gather (from the stray words she utters) what she means. 
Aim at it, guess at the meaning. 

10. Botch, patch, fill in between the gaps. 

13. Nothing 1 sure, clear, certain, or thoroughly ascer- 
tained. 



296 yOTES [Act IV 

15. Ill-breeding-, hatching mischief (ill is a noun). 

18. Toy, trine. Amiss, disaster. (The whole atmos- 
phere of the court is charged with misery, fear, and sense of 
guilt and wrong.) 

19. Artless, unskillful. Jealousy, suspicion. 

20. Spills, destroys. 

25. Cockle-hat. The cockle-shell in the hat was the 
badge of a pilgrim. 

26. Shoon, a plural archaic even in S.'s time. Spenser, 
also archaically, has treen. 

37. Larded, garnished. 

58. Bewept. One of the functions of be is to turn intran- 
sitive verbs into transitive. Cf. bemoan, bewail, etc. 

41. God ield, God yield or reward you. 

42. Baker's daughter. There is a story once current in 
Gloucestershire that our Saviour went into a baker's shop to 
ask for bread. The mistress was about to give him what he 
wanted, when her daughter interrupted her with scolding, 
and for this lack of charity was transformed into an owl. 

45. Of this, about this. 

50. Valentine. According to an old custom, which lasted 
into the eighteenth century, the first maid seen by a man on 
this day was considered his valentine, or true-love, for a 
year. 

64. Remove for removal. Muddied, thick, etc., re- 
ferring to the blood — and to the mood of the people. 

66. Greenly, foolishly. 

07. In hugger-mugger, in secrecy and hurriedly. The 
only instance of the word in S. 

70. As much containing, of as much importance. 

72. Keeps himself in clouds, is mysterious and reserved 
in his conduct. 

73. Buzzers, whisperers. 

7."). Wherein = in which pestilent speeches, necessity 
(the necessity under which the accuser lies to make good 



Scene 5] NOTES 297 

his charge), having no proper data, will not stick at ar- 
raigning even us in every ear. 

78. A murdering-piece, a cannon loaded with case-shot, 
a sort of rude mitrailleuse. 

80. Switzers. Swiss Guards served in France, Spain, 
Italy, and other countries; and, as having no connection 
with any local faction, could be thoroughly trusted. To 
this day the Pope's bodyguard consists chiefly of Swiss 
soldiers. 

82. Over-peering* of his list, looking over (rising above) 
his boundary or limits. 

88. Of every word, of everything that is to serve as a 
watchword to the nation. 

93. Counter. Hounds run counter when they trace the 
scent backwards, mistaking the course of the game. 

109. Demand his fill, ask questions to his heart's content. 

116. Throughly = thoroughly. 

118. My will shall stay me — nothing else. 

123. Swoopstake. The winner sweeps or draws the 
whole of the stakes. 

127. Pelican. It was long supposed that the pelican fed 
her young on her own blood. 

128. Repast, feed. The only instance of the word. 

131. Sensibly, feelingly. 

132. As level. The metaphor is taken from the custom 
of point-blank firing. 

137. Virtue, power. We still have the phrase by virtue of. 

143. Fine, tender. 

141. Instance, example or specimen. The notion seems 
to be that Ophelia's wits have gone after her dead father. 

154. The wheel. She perhaps fancies herself singing to 

the spinning-wheel. The false steward. This story 

has not come down to us. 

157. Rosemary was supposed to strengthen the memory. 
(To her brother.) 



298 XOTES [Act IV 

158. Pansies, from the Fr. pensees. 

160. Document, a lesson. (Used in the primary sense 
of the Lat. documentum, something taught, from doceo, I 
teach.) 

162. Fennel (the emblem of flattery) for you, the king. 
But Longfellow, in the Goblet of Life, says : — 

1 Above the lowly plants it towers, 
The fennel with its yellow flowers, 
And in an earlier age than ours 
Was gifted with the wondrous powers 
Lost reason to restore.' 

163. Rue for you (the Queen). It was also called herb 
o' grace. It was believed to be good for the eyes. 

165. With a difference. The Queen and Ophelia both 
had need to wear rue, but for different reasons. 

166. Violets, the emblem of faithfulness. 

169. Thought, anxiety. Passion, violent sorrow- 

170. Favor, charm, attractiveness. 

180. God . . . souls. " This is the common conclusion to 
many of the ancient monumental inscriptions." — Steevens. 

181. Of all = on all. 

185. Of whom your = of your wisest friends whom you 
will. 

188. Touched, tainted by any connection with the deed 
— accessory in any way. 

l ( .)4r. His means of death = the means of his death. 

195. Hatchment, said to be a corruption of achievement. 
The steps are : Achievement (the heraldic name for es- 
cutcheon of a deceased person) ; atch'ment ; hatchment. 

1<)6. Ostentation, display. Caldecott says that fashion 
had appropriated this word to funeral pomp. 

198. That = so that. 



Scene 7] NOTES 299 



Scene 6 

8. He shall, sir. The gruff, friendly politeness of the 
sailor. 

11. Let to know, caused to know, informed. 

12. Overlooked = looked over. Affixes have in English 
very different meanings, according as they are separable or 
inseparable. 

13. Means of access to, an introduction. 

15. Appointment = equipment. 

16. Compelled, involuntary. 

19. Thieves of mercy = merciful robbers. 

24. Light . , . bore. Metaphor from the bore or caliber 
of a gun ; the charge is too light for a gun of such caliber — 
* for the caliber of the facts.' 

Scene 7 

1. Acquittance for acquittal, a form which S. has not. 
3. Sith. See note on II. ii. 6. 

6. Feats, acts. {Feat is a doublet — through N. Fr. — of 
fact, from L&t. factum, a deed.) 

8. All things else, every other consideration. 

9. Mainly, powerfully. 

10. Much unsinewed, very weak. 

13. Be it either which, be it which of the two (' either ') 
it may. 

14. Conjunctive, knit. 

16. By her, beside her. 

17. Count, trial, account (Lat. compiitare, comp'tare). 
Count is also spelled compt by S. 

18. General, common. Gender, kind or race of men. 

S. has also, One gender of herbs. 

20. The spring. The dropping-well at Knaresborough, 
in Yorkshire, Eng., which incrusts wood, etc., with a calcare- 
ous deposit, according to Reed. 



300 NOTES [Act IV 

21. Gyves to graces, make even his fetters into orna- 
ments. 

22. Too slightly timbered, with not a heavy enough 

body. Loud, with reference to the shouts and applause 

of the people. 

21. Not where = not gone whither. 

27. May go back, if I may praise her for what she was, 
but is not. 

28. Stood challenger, stood forth and challenged. 

On mount of all the age, on the summit of the time. Mr. 
Moberly says, ' The allusion seems to be to the coronation 
ceremony of the Emperor of Austria as King of Hungary; 
when, on the Mount of Defiance, at Presburg, he unsheathes 
the ancient sword of state, and, shaking it towards north, 
south, east, and west, challenges the four corners of the 
world to dispute his rights.' 

32. Beard he shook with (=by). Danger coming so 
near us as to, etc. 

42. Set naked, landed with all my baggage lost. 

47. Should = can possibly. 

48. Abuse, piece of deceit, an illusion. 
50. Character, handwriting. 

53. Lost in it, cannot find my way in it. 

57. As how . . . otherwise. ' That we should believe 
Hamlet returned, or that, with such evidence, we should not 
believe it, each seems impossible.' 

59. So = provided that. 

61. Checking at. To check at was a term in falconry, 
applied to a hawk when she leaves her proper game to fly at 
some other bird. That, a pronominal particle for if. 

62. Work him, urge him gradually. 

63. Device, scheming. 

66. Uncharge, bring no charge against. 

69. Organ, instrument. It falls rig'ht. This notion 

of yours fits into my plan. 



Scene 7] NOTES 301 

72. Your sum of parts (= the sum of your parts), the 
whole of your talents. 

75. Of the unworthiest siege, of the lowest rank. The 
siege (or seat) at table denoted the rank. 

79. Weeds, importing 1 , clothes which indicate. Chaucer 
often uses wede for clothes ; and we still have the phrase 
widow' s weeds. 

80. Health, prosperity. 

83. Can well = have great skill. This absolute use of 
can is found seven times in S. 

86. Incorpsed for incorporate, made one body with. 

87. Topped, overtopped, surpassed. 

88. In forgery, even in conceiving or imagining. 

Shapes and tricks, attitudes and maneuvers. 

92. The brooch was a jewel worn in the hat, and thus 
very conspicuous. Cf. Jonson's Staple of News, iii. 3, v who 
is the very Brooch o' the Bench, gem o' the city.' 

94. Confession. Delius says that this word implies that 
Lamond would not willingly acknowledge the superiority of 
Laertes. 

95. Masterly report == report of your masterly skill. 

96. In your defense = in your knowledge of the art of 
defense. 

99. Scrimers, fencers. Fr. escrimeurs. 
101. Opposed them = were their opponent. 

110. Love is begun by time. The fallacy of the king's 
reasoning lies in the word by ; if he had said in, he would 
have been right. 

111. Passages of proof, events which have come within 
my own experience. 

115. Still = always. 

116. Plurisy (a too-muchness) , from Lat. plus {pluris), 
more. {Pleurisy, the disease, is an inflammation of the 
pleura, the membrane which covers the lungs.) S. meant 
to say plethora. 



802 NOTES [Act IV, -Scene 7. 

117. Too-much, an adverb used as a nouii. So we say 
the why and the wherefore. 

121. A spendthrift sigh, a sigh that wastes the strength. 
There was in S.'s time a notion that every sigh cost the loss 
of a drop of blood from the heart. 

122. Hurts by easing", injures while it gives relief. 
126. Sanctuarize, be a sanctuary for. 

133. Remiss, careless. The word has now an element of 
blame in it. 

134. Generous, large-minded, not suspicious. Con- 
triving, plotting (and therefore not likely to suspect plots 
in others). 

135. Peruse, examine. Cf. II. i. 87. 

137. Unbated, unblunted (that is, without the button). 

S. has bate, abate, and rebate in the sense of blunt. A 

pass of practice = a treacherous lunge. 

140. Unction, ointment. (The king need not have taken 
so much time and trouble to get at the wicked side of 
Laertes ; his mind was already well prepared.) Mounte- 
bank, a quack-doctor. (From It. montimbanco, one who 
mounts a bench to, etc.) 

141. Mortal, deadly. 

142. Cataplasm, poultice. 
L43. Simples. Herbs. 

144. Under the moon. These herbs had to be gathered 
by moonlight. 

14(5. Contagion, the abstract for the concrete (poison). 
That = so that. 

141). Shape, the proposed plot. 

150. Drift look through, purpose appear because of. 

L52. Back, a support in reserve. • 

163. Blast in proof = burst under trial. A metaphor 
from the testing of a gun. 

L64. Cunnings, the skill of each of you. 

157. As, for so. 



Act V, Scene 1] NOTES 303 

158. That represents when. 

159. For the nonce, for the occasion. A corruption of 
for then anes = ad hoc unu?n. The n has dropped off, and 
adhered to the wrong word. 

160. Stuck, thrust. From It. stoccata, a term in fencing. 

166. Aslant a brook. ' The willow grows on the banks 
of most of our small streams, particularly the Avon, near 
Stratford, and from the looseness of the soil the trees partly 
lose their hold, and bend " aslant " the stream.' 

167. Hoar, or silvery-gray on the under side; and it is 
that side which would ' show in the glassy stream.' 

169. Crow-flowers, the name in S.'s time for the 'Rag- 
ged Robin.' Purples, a kind of orchid. 

170. Liberal, free-spoken. 

173. Sliver, a branch broken or torn off. 

178. Incapable, incapable of understanding. 

179. Indued = endowed with fitting qualities. 

187. Trick, peculiar habit. 

188. When these are gone, when my tears are shed, 
the woman will have departed out of me. 

191. Douts it = puts it out. Bout = do out. Cf . Don 
for do on; doff for do off; dup for do up (or open). 



ACT FIFTH 

Scene 1 

" One other objection let me touch upon here, especially as 
it has been urged against Hamlet, and that is the introduc- 
tion of low characters and comic scenes in tragedy. Even 
Gar rick, who had just assisted at the Stratford Jubilee, 
where Shakespeare had been pronounced divine, was induced 
by this absurd outcry for the proprieties of the tragic stage 
to omit the grave-diggers' scene from Hamlet. Leaving 
apart the fact that Shakespeare would not have been the 



304 NOTES [Act V 

representative poet he is if he had not given expression to 
this striking tendency of the Northern races, which shows 
itself constantly, not only in their literature, but even in 
their mythology and their architecture, the grave-diggers' 
scene always impresses me as one of the most pathetic in the 
whole tragedy. That Shakespeare introduced such scenes 
and characters with deliberate intention, and with a view 
to artistic relief and contrast, there can hardly be a doubt. 
We must take it for granted that a man whose works show 
everywhere the results of judgment sometimes acted with 
forethought. I find the springs of the profoundest sorrow 
and pity in this hardened indifference of the grave-diggers, 
in their careless discussion as to whether Ophelia's death 
was by suicide or no, in their singing and jesting at their 
dreary work. 

' A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, 
For — and a shrouding-sheet 
O, a pit of clay for to be made 
For such a guest is meet.' 

"VVe know who is to be the guest of this earthen hospitality, 
— how much beauty, love, and heartbreak are to be covered 
in that pit of clay. All we remember of Ophelia reacts upon 
us with tenfold force, and we recoil from our amusement 
at the ghastly drollery of the two delvers with a shock of 
horror. That the unconscious Hamlet should stumble on 
tliis grave of all others, that it should be here that he should 
pause to muse humorously on death and decay, all this pre- 
pares us for the revulsion of passion in the next scene, and 
for the frantic confession, — 

I loved Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers 
Could not with all their quantity of love 
Make up my sum ! ' " 

— James Russell Lowell. 






Scene 1] NOTES 305 

4. Straight = straightway, at once. Crowner, an 

old form for coroner. 

9. Se offendendo for defendendo. 

12. Argal for Lat. ergo, therefore. 

17. Nil he = ne will he. Ne is the O. E. negative, and 
was combined with am into nam ; with is into nis ; with 
wolde into nolde (= wonld not) ; with were into nere, etc. 

This speech of the clown is said to be a satire on the case 
of Sir James Hales (in the time of Elizabeth) . Sir James 
Hales had drowned himself ; and the question arose whether 
his estates were forfeit to the Crown. Much legal subtlety 
was expended in discovering whether Sir James was the 
agent or the patient; who drowned him; and in showing 
that the living Sir James caused the dead Sir James to die ; 
that the living nia.ii only must therefore be punished; but 
where was the living man ? and so on. 

23. Quest for inquest. 

29. Even Christian = fellow-Christian. 

34. The first. Adam's spade is mentioned in some books 
of heraldry as the most ancient form of escutcheon. 

53. Unyoke, take your rest, your work is done — a farm- 
servant's phrase. 

56. Mass = by the mass. 

61. Stoup, a word still in use in Scotland. 

62. In youth. The verses that follow are from an old 
song attributed to Thomas, Lord Vaux, and published in 
1557. The and ah represent the pants and grunts after a 
stroke of the mattock. 

64. To contract, a line without sense — due to the mud- 
dle-headedness or to the imperfect memory of the singer. 

69. A property of easiness, a quality that sits lightly 
on his mind. 

72. Daintier, more delicate. 

75. Intil, into. A form still found in Scotland. 

76. Such = young. 



306 NOTES [Act V 

78. Jowls, knocks. We may imagine the clown knock- 
ing (jowling) the sknll into the earth with his spade. 

80. Politician, a schemer. S. always uses the word in a 
bad sense. So politic is used in the sense of artful. 

81. O'er-re aches, gets the better of. 

90. Chapless, jawless. Mazard, head (used in a 

contemptuous sense). 

91. Revolution, change of fortune by time. The 

trick = the knack. 

93, Loggats, a diminutive of logs. A kind of bowls, 
* with a difference.' 

96. For and = and eke. 

100. Quiddits for quiddities, subtleties. Quidditas was 
the scholastic Latin for the essence of a thing. Quil- 
lets, from Lat. quidlibet, whatever. (Cog. Quibble.) Lord 
Campbell remarks, ' The law terms which follow are all 
used seemingly with a full knowledge of their import.' 

105. Recognizances, bonds to acknowledge money lent 
on land. 

106. Fines, from Lat. finis, an end. (A fine in law is a 
sum of money paid to the lord by the tenant, for permission 
to transfer his lands to another.) 

110. Pair of indentures. Indentures were contracts 
made out in duplicate. Both were written on one sheet of 
parchment, which was then cut in a zigzag fashion (hence 
the name indenture, from Lat. dens, dent-is, a tooth). Each 
party then received one of the two fitting parts ; and the fact 
of their fitting proved the genuineness of the documents. 
Cf. the idea in Tally. 

112. Box, grave, coffin. (But it is in a box that attorneys 
keep their deeds.) Inheritor, possessor. 

118. Assurance, perfect security. With a double refer- 
ence — one to the legal meaning, 'conveyance by deed.' 

L23. Thine. Hamlet uses the thou in speaking to the 
clown; but the clown employs the you. Thou was in S.'s 



Scene 1] NOTES 307 

time used (1) to friends; and (2) to servants; and (3) in 
contempt — just like the German Du. 

128. Quick, living. Cf . the phrase, ' The quick and the 
dead.' 

139. Absolute, thorough-going in his demands. 

140. By the card. The card was the circular disk of 
pasteboard on which the points of the compass were marked. 
Hence you must not say N.E. if the wind was really N.E. 

by N. Equivocation, using words in two different 

senses. (From Lat. sequus, equal, and vox, a voice or 
word.) 

142. So picked, so nice, so precise. 

144. Kibe, chilblain on the heel. 

149. Hamlet was born. This would make Hamlet 
thirty. There have been endless discussions on this subject 
of Hamlet's age, but no agreement has been reached. 

168. Last you, the ethical dative. The your as in your 

philosophy in I. v. 167. Eight year. In older English, 

many neuter nouns had no plural ending ; and we still have 
survivals of this in sheep, deer, horse, pound, night (in fort- 
night), stone, etc. 

181. Rhenish, Rhine wine, ' hock.' 

182. Yorick may either be a corruption of RoricJc or of 
Yorg, the Danish for George. 

189. It, all that is left of him. 

191. Gibes, jeers and jokes. 

193. On a roar. We still have the phrase, i set on fire.' 

194. Chapf alien, in two senses. 

196. Favor. Complexion, appearance. 

208. Too curiously, too elaborately, with too much care. 

210. Modesty, moderation. 

218. Flaw, blast or gust. 

221. Maimed, defective. By the old English law, which 
continued up to the preceding century, a suicide was buried, 
without any funeral service, at the meeting of four cross-roads. 



808 NOTES [Act V 

223. Fordo, undo. Estate, rank. 

224. Couch, crouch down and hide. 

228. Obsequies, funeral rites. Enlarged. Some cere- 
monies were added over and above those to which she was 
legally entitled. 

229. Warrantise for warranty — another form of which 
is guarantee. 

230. Great command, of the king. Order, the order 

set or ordained by the Church. 

233. Shards, potsherds, fragments of pottery. 

234. Crants, garland. H. Ger. Kranz. Down to the 
end of the 18th century it was the custom in many country 
parishes in England to carry a garland of flowers before the 
coffin of an unmarried young woman. 

235. Bringing* home, to her last home, the notion being 
that the funeral was to be the counterpart of the procession 
bringing the bride home to the house of her husband. 

238. Requiem, a song of rest for the dead. (Ace. of Lat. 
requies, rest.) 
240. Peace-parted = departed in peace. 
250. Ingenious sense, quick feeling. 

255. Pelion, a mountain in Thessaly, near Mount Ossa. 
To pile ' Pelion upon Ossa ' became a proverbial expression 
for exaggeration in statement. 

256. Blue Olympus, a high mountain between Thessaly 
and Macedonia — the abode of the gods. 

258. Conjures = adjures. Wand'ring stars = the 

Stars in their journey through the heavens. 

259. Wonder-wounded, wonder-struck, 'struck' with 
surprise. 

263. Splenitive. The spleen was supposed to be the seat 
of anger ; as the heart of love, and the liver of revenge. 

269. Wag", move. In Shakespeare's day war/ did not have 
the somewhat comic meaning that it has now. 

275. Forbear him, leave him alone. 



Scene 2] NOTES 309 

277. W oo' t = icouldst thou. A colloquialism — which in- 
dicates his contempt for Laertes. 

278. Eisel, vinegar. So as to have to make a wry face. 
Hamlet despises the overwrought grief of Laertes. 

280. Outface, put me out of countenance. 

289. Golden couplets. The pigeon generally sits on two 
eggs; and, when her young are hatched (disclosed), they 
are covered with a yellow (golden) down. 

297. To the present push, to the issue immediately. 

299. Living". No doubt a hint to Laertes that Hamlet's 
life was going to be offered up in revenge for the death of 
Ophelia. 

Scene 2 

6. Mutines, mutineers. Bilboes, iron stocks used on 

board ship. From Bilboa, in Spain, which was famous 

from Roman times for the manufacture of iron. Rashly, 

hastily. 

11. Rough-hew. Rough-heiving comes before the finer 
work of shaping. 

13. Scarfed, thrown loosely about me, my arms not put 
through the sleeves. 

17. To unseal = as to unseal. 

18. Grand, the official term. 

19. Exact, carefully detailed. 

20. Several, separate, different. 

21. Importing, relating to. 

22. Bug's, bugbears. (Cog., Bogy.) In my life, in the 

event of my being allowed to live. 

23. Supervise (a verb for a noun) , at sight, on the first 
reading. Bated, allowed. 

29. Be-netted, the only instance of the word. 
31. They, my brains. 

33. Statists, statesmen. 

34. A baseness. Blackstone says, ' Most of the great 



310 XOTFS [Act V 

men of S.'s time, whose autographs have been preserved, 
wrote very bad hands : their secretaries* very neat ones.' 

36. Yeoman's service, faithful service, such as the yeo- 
men or minor freeholders were accustomed to render to 
England in war. 

37. The effect = the substance or import. 

41. Wheaten, to indicate industry and plenty. 

42. Comma. Dr. Schmidt says that Hamlet's expression 
is purposely ludicrous. The full stop or period divides; the 
comma connects. 

43. Charge, weight. S. also uses charge in the sense of 
baggage. 

47. Shriving-time, time for confession (shrift). The 
term came afterwards to be synonymous with any short 
period. 

48. Ordinant, ruling, arranging. The only instance of 
the word. A participle formed after the French model, 
like mar chant, couchant, rampant, regardant, in heraldry. 

50. Model, counterpart. 

51. The writ, what was written. 

52. Subscribed, signed. 

54. Was sequent, followed. 
57. Make love to. were eager for. 

59. Insinuation, in the primary meaning of the word — 
winding themselves into the business. 

61. Pass, thrust. 

62. Opposites, opponents. 

<;:;. Thinks't thee. Like meseems, methinks, metkought, 
etc. The think in methinks comes from foncan, to seem, 
and is always intransitive: the think in 2" think is from 

fiencan, to think, which is always transitive. Stand . . . 

upon, is incumbent on me. 

66. My proper = my own. 

68. Quit him, pay him off. 

69. Come in further evil, commit further crimes. 



Scene 2] XOTFS 311 

73. 'You never suspect the errand Hamlet is on until 
you happen to hear that little word, " the interim is mine! " 
It means more mischief than all the monologues. No 
threats; no imprecations; no more mention of smiling, 
damned villain : no more self-accusal ; but solely and briefly, 
"It will be short ; the interim is mine ! " Then, for the first 
time, we recognize the extent of the change that has been 
wrought in Hamlet ; then, for the first time, we perfectly 
comprehend Jiis quiet jesting with the clown, his tranquil 
musings with Horatio. The man is transformed by a great 
resolve ; his mind is made up. The return of the vessel from 
England will be the signal for his own execution, and there- 
fore the moral problem is solved ; the only chance of saving 
his life from a lawless murderer is to slay him ; it has become 
an act of self-defense : he can do it with perfect conscience. 
... At the very moment he encounters the clown in the 
churchyard, he is on his death march to the palace at 
Elsinore.' — Miles. 

79. Bravery, showiness. 

83. Water-fly. ' A water-fly skips up and down upon the 
surface of the water without any apparent purpose or reason, 
and is thence the emblem of a busy trirler.' — Dr. Johnson. 

87. Crib, manger. 

88. Mess, dining table. Chough, a kind of jackdaw. 

89. Spacious, broad-acred. 

90. Sweet lord. Osric speaks the euphuistic language 
so fashionable in the time of Queen Elizabeth. 

98. Indifferent cold, rather cold. 

100. Complexion, constitution. 

10(3. For mine ease. I feel easier with it off. 

108. Absolute, perfect. 

109. Differences, distinctions that set him high above 
other men. Great showing", elegant appearance. 

110. Feelingly, accurately — with a proper feeling of 
each good quality in him ( = to speak him home) . 



312 NOTES [Act V 

Card or calendar of gentry. 'The card (see note on V. 
i. 140) by which a gentleman is to direct his course ; the 
calendar by which he is to choose his time, that what he 
does may be both excellent and seasonable/ — J. 

111. Gentry, like Chaucer's genterie or gentelesse. 

The continent. The metaphor is taken from a map; and 
part is used in two senses. 

113. His definement = the definition of him. Perdi- 
tion, loss. 

114. Inventorially, as if one were drawing up an inven- 
tory. 

116. Yaw (for tvould yaiv), a nautical term for a ship fall- 
ing away from, and not answering, the helm. (The passage 
is almost unintelligible, and is probably corrupt.) 

117. Of great article = of many items and qualities 
(articles are the particulars in an inventory). 

118. His infusion, essence. Dearth = dearness or 

high value. 

11<). His semblable, the only thing like him. 

120. Trace, follow — but also used in the secondary sense 
of delineate. Umbrage, shadow, from Lat. umbra. 

123. The concernancy ? What does all this point to ? 
^126. In another tongue. Perhaps this means " Your 
own language on the tongue of another." 

127. You will do't, you will succeed in understanding, 
if you try. 

1 28. What imports, why has this gentleman been named ? 
136. Much approve me = be much to my credit. 

1.39. Compare with = assume to rival. 

142. Imputation = that which is imputed to him, repu- 
tation. 

113. Laid on him, won for him. By them, by his 

weapons. Osric uses weapon in a collective sense. 

Meed, merit. 

1 19. Imponed, staked. 



Scene 2] NOTES 313 

151. Assigns, appendages, belongings. Hangers, the 

straps which attach the sheath to the belt or girdle. 

152. Responsive, are in keeping with. 

154. Liberal conceit, free and charming design. 

157. Must be edified by the margent, be compelled to 
have recourse to the notes — which in old books were printed 
in the margin. Margent (the only form in S.), margin. 

159. Germane = appropriate, akin. 

170. Answer, in the sense of meeting; though. Hamlet 
intentionally takes it in the other sense. 

175. Breathing-time, time for exercise and a constitu- 
tional. 

180. Re-deliver, report. 

187. Lapwing. The young lapwing was said to run away 
with the shell on its head as soon as it was hatched. 

189. Comply = pay compliments to. 

192. Outward habit, superficial manner. Encoun- 
ter, address. 

193. Yesty, frothy. 

194. Fond, foolish. Winnowed (from wind), sepa- 
rated (the chaff) from the wheat. 

195. Bubbles. Here the metaphor changes. Osricislike 
chaff, winnowed from the wheat; and like bubbles, which 
rise to the surface of the water. 

197. Commended him (= himself), sent you his compli- 
ments. 
203. Fitness, convenience. 
208. < In happy time. In good time. 
209. Gentle entertainment, some courteous talk. 

214. At the odds = with the odds I have. 

215. How ill all's here. Coleridge says, ' S. seems to 
mean all Hamlet's character to be brought together before 
his final disappearance from the scene : his meditative ex- 
cess in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with 
Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to 



314 * XOTES [Act V 

generalize on all occasions in the dialogues with Horatio, 
his fine gentlemanly manners with Osric, and his and Laer- 
tes's own fondness for presentiment.' 

219. Gain-giving", misgiving. We have gainsay ; and we 
had gainstrive and gainstdnd. 

221. Fit, ready. 

225. The readiness is all. The same thought occurs in 
King Lear, V. ii. 11. 

226. Has aught, can take anything with him. What 

is't = what matters it if we have to? 

231. Presence = the people present. 

234. Exception, objection. We have this meaning still 
in the phrase, To take exception to. 

235. Madness. Hamlet has still, in the king's presence, 
to keep up the mask of madness — lest he should put the 
king too much on his guard. 

243. Audience, like presence in line 231. 

244. Disclaiming from = disavowal of. Purposed 

evil, intentional harm. 

247. In nature = so far as my natural feelings are con- 
cerned. 

248. Whose motive = the moving power of which. 

249. In my terms of honor, so far as (conventional) 
honor is concerned. 

252. Precedent of peace, a precedent among affairs of 
honor which will justify me in making peace. 

253. Ungored, unhurt. 

260. Stick fiery off, be set off brilliantly, stand out in 
brilliant prominence. 

268. Likes me. Me is a dative. A = one. 

272. Quit, pay him off. The third exchange of 

thrust and parry. 

275. Union, a perfect pearl — ' a large solitary pearl not 
set with other jewels.' (From Lat. unus, one.) 

278. Kettle, kettle-drum. 



Scene 2] NOTES 315 

285. This pearl is thine, and he pours the poison in. 

291. Napkin, handkerchief. 

302. "Wanton of = trine with me as if you were playing- 
with a child. ' This is a quiet but very significant stroke of 
delineation. Laertes is not playing his best, and it is the 
consciousness of what is at the point of his foil that keeps 
him from doing so ; and the effects are perceptible to Hamlet, 
though he dreams not of the reason.' 

305. Incensed, angry. 

309. Springe, snare. A writer in Notes and Queries 
says, ' This bird is trained to decoy other birds, and some- 
times, while strutting incautiously too near the springe, it 
becomes itself entangled.' 

311. How does the queen? What is the matter with 
her? 

331. Tempered, mixed. 

338. Mutes, personages who have no speaking parts in 
the play. 

343. Unsatisfied, not fully informed. 

356. O'er-crows, overcomes. 

360. Occurrents, things that have occurred, incidents. 
The only instance of the word. 

361. Solicited, prompted (my action). Sentence incom- 
plete. 

367. Quarry, dead game. This quarry = these slaugh- 
tered persons. (There are two words quarry in English, 
(1) from low Lat. quadrare, to make square ; (2) from O. 
Fr. coree, from Lat. cor, the heart, because the heart and 

entrails were given to the hunting dogs.) Cries on 

havoc, calls for slaughter and attack with no quarter given, 
or tells of havoc, etc. 

368. Toward, going on. Eternal. S. seems to use 

this word as the strongest epithet he knows. 

375. His mouth, the king's. 
384. Carnal, sensual. 



316 NOTES [Act V, Scene 2] 

386. Put on, instigated. 

387. Upshot. Conclusion or final issue. 
389. Deliver, recount. 

392. Rights of memory = rights which are remembered. 

395. Will draw on more = will be seconded by others. 

398. On plots = in consequence of plots. Four cap- 
tains. This was the custom in the case of a soldier of high 
rank. 

400. Put on = put to the test, had he become king. 

401. Passage, departure from this life. 

402. Rites of war. Mr. Moberly, excellently — as usual, 
1 Late and under the strong compulsion of approaching 
death, he has done, and well done, the inevitable task from 
which his gentle nature shrank. Why then any further 
thought, in the awful presence of death, of crimes, conspira- 
cies, vengeance? Think that he has been slain in battle, 
like his Sea-king forefathers ; and let the booming cannon 
be his mourners.' 



EXAMINATION PAPEES 



A (First Act) 

1. Give a brief but connected account of the incidents 
in the First Act. 

2. What state of feeling seems to exist in Hamlet's 
mind in relation to the King, and to the Queen? Quote 
lines in justification of your view. 

3. State by whom, to whom, and on what occasions the 
following lines were uttered : — 

(a) What art thou that usurp' st this time of night ? 



EXAMINATION PAPEBS 317 

(b) Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. 

(c) An understanding simple and unschooled. 

(d) Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven. 

(e) More honored in the breach than the observance. 

4. Quote the lines which precede or which follow the 
above. 

5. Explain fully and annotate the words in italics. 

6. Explain fully the following words and phrases : (a) 
The sensible and true avouch; (6) romage ; (c) extrava- 
gant ; (d) lose your voice ; (e) defeated; (/) slow leave ; 
(g) discourse of reason ; (&) primy nature ; (2) addition ; 
(j) bound to hear; (&) unhouseled; (?) without more 
circumstance. 

7. Give some examples of the peculiarities of Shake- 
speare's grammar. 

B (Second Act) 

1. What new personages are introduced in the Second 
Act ; and what are their respective functions in the play ? 

2. Describe shortly Hamlet's interview with the Plat- 
ers. 

3. State in your own words the sum of Hamlet's reflec- 
tions at the end of this act. 

4. State by whom, of whom, and on what occasions 
the following lines were said : — 

v (a) With Windlaces, and with assays of bias. 

(b) Ungartered and down-gyved to his ankle. 

(c) To show us so much gentry and good will. 

(d) If I had played the desk or table-book. 

(e) How express and admirable ! 
(/) I know a hawk from a handsaw. 



318 EXAMINATION PAPEBS 

5. Annotate the words in italics. 

6. Explain fully the following words and phrases : (a) 
Keep; (b) fetch of warrant ; (c) shatter all his bulk; 
(d) borne in hand ; (e) round with him ; (/) lungs tickle 
o' the sere ; (g) eyases; (h) region; (i) the general ear ; 
(j) organ. 

7. Quote the lines in which the above words and 
phrases occur. 

8. Give some examples of Shakespeare's use of the 
dative. 

C (Third Act) 

1. Describe the character of Ophelia, and contrast her 
with the Queen. 

2. Give the substance of the King's soliloquy in Scene 
Third. 

3. Quote lines from this and from the First Act to 
show the opinion which Hamlet held of his father and 
of his uncle. 

4. State by whom, of whom, and on what occasions 
the following lines were said : — 

(a) Who would fardels bear, 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life ? 

(b) And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose. 

(c) O'erstep not the modesty of nature. 

(d) Confederate season, else no creature seeing. 

(e) Up, sword ! and know thou a more horrid hent ! 
(/) Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. 

5. Annotate fully the words in italics. 

0. Give some instances (a) of Shakespeare's use of a 
verb as a noun ; and (b) of his employment of prolepsis. 



EXAMINATION PAPEBS 319 

7. Explain fully the following words and phrases : (a) 
Affront; (&) the rub; (c) in the ear; (d) by and by; 
(e) the cease of majesty ; (/) broad-blown : (#) mope ; 
(li) capable of; (i) conclusions. 

D (Fourth Act) 

1. Give a short, but connected, account of the inci- 
dents in this Act. 

2. Give the substance of Hamlet's soliloquy in the 
Fourth Scene. 

3. State the substance of the conversation of the King 
with Laertes in the Seventh Scene. 

4. State by whom, of whom or what, and on what 
occasions the following lines were said : — 

(a) As level as the cannon to his blank. 

(b) Your fat king is but variable service. 

(c) Thinking too precisely on the event. 

(d) The ocean, overpeering of his list. 

(e) They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy. 
(/) For goodness, growing to a plurisy. 

5. Explain fully the words in italics. 

6. Explain the following words and phrases : (a) The 
main; (b) makes mouths; (c) of large discourse; (d) 
not continent enough; (e) a riotous head; (/) a docu- 
ment in madness; (#) much unsinewed ; (Ji) uncharge; 
(i) passages of proof : (j) mortal. 

7. Quote examples (a) of Shakespeare's use of the 
Northern plural ; and (b) of such phrases as his means 
of death. 



320 EXAMINATION PAPERS 

E (Fifth Act) 

1. What are the events outside and also within the 
play that are gradually maturing the catastrophe ; and 
what change seems to come over Hamlet's own mind ? 

2. Quote passages from Polonius's and from Osric's 
speeches to illustrate the euphuism of the time. 

3. Quote the passage which shows that Hamlet had a 
presentiment of what was coming. 

4. State by whom, of whom or what, and on what 
occasions the following lines were uttered : — 

(a) Tell me that, and unyoke. 

(b) The length and breadth of a pair of indentures. 

(c) This grave shall have a living monument. 

(d) With, ho ! such bugs and goblins in my life. 

(e) And in the cup an union shall he throw. 
(/) Absent thee from felicity awhile. 

5. Explain fully the words in italics. 

6. Annotate the following words and phrases: (a) On 
the supervise ; (6) jowls it ; (c) his quillets ; (d) ivarroit- 
ise ; (e) conjures the stars; (/) too curiously; (g) be- 
netted; (h) near my conscience ; (i) spacious; (j) comply 
with; (&) outward habit; (Z) quarry; (m) even 
Christian. 

7. Give some examples (a) of Shakespeare's use of an 
abstract for a concrete term ; (b) of his use of a in the 
sense of one; and (c) of his ' ethical ' use of you. 

8. Write a short account of the character of Hamlet; 
and quote lines to bear out your opinions. 



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